Coal
Coal
Research article
Evaluation of wall slip effects on the flow characteristics of
petroleum coke–water slurry flow along pipelines
Xiaobin Zhang,1,2 Meng Liu,3,4*               Kagiso Bikane4 and Yanrong Li1
1
 College of Mining Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China
2
 Shanxi Water Conservancy Technical Institute, Yuncheng 044004, China
3
 School of Energy and Environment, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
4
 Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK
                 ABSTRACT: Flow characteristics of petroleum coke–water slurry (PCWS) were investigated in a slurry transportation
                 facility. True rheological properties, drag reduction, and flow resistances of PCWS under the influence of wall slip were
                 studied using the Tikhonov regularization method. Results show that the shear viscosity is insensitive to changes in the shear
                 rate when the solid loading of PCWS is 59.8 wt%. However, the PCWS of 61.1 wt% exhibits typical dilatant fluid properties.
                 As the shear rate increases, the PCWS of 63.4 wt% initially exhibits shear thinning, and then, the viscosity increases sharply
                 when the shear rate exceeds 250 s1. In addition, the slurry also displays shear thinning at the shear rates exceeding 600 s1.
                 Modified friction factor-generalized Reynolds number correlation is established to describe the resistance properties of a
                 laminar flow of PCWS. When increasing the velocity, the drag reduction produced by the wall slip behavior reduces for
                 the 59.8 wt% PCWS but increases for the 61.1 wt% PCWS. The drag reduction decreases at the outset followed by an
                 increase for the 63.4 wt% PCWS. A decrease in the inner diameter of pipeline could enhance the effect of drag reduction
                 of PCWS flowing in a pipeline. © 2017 Curtin University and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
                 KEYWORDS: petroleum coke–water slurry; wall slip behavior; Tikhonov regularization; drag reduction; generalized
                 Reynolds number
resistance properties of PCWS flowing in the pipelines.             stainless steel pipelines, water cooling system, and a
It is well known that different fluids show different wall          slurry tank (1 m3). PCWS was prepared and sealed in
slip characteristics when flowing in pipes, and the wall            a slurry tank, and the flow characteristics of PCWS
slip effect is related to many factors, including particle         were conducted using different internal diameters (10,
size, test geometry, concentration, and surface                    14, 16, and 20 mm) of stainless steel pipelines with
properties [11,16]. Numerical methods have been                    absolute surface roughness 0.015 mm. The flow rate
developed to investigate the wall slip characteristics of          Q and pressure drop ΔP of PCWS flowing in the
slurry flowing in a pipeline [17–21]. The most important            pipeline were measured using the electromagnetic flow
and the most widely used numerical method is the                   meter and a differential pressure sensor, respectively, in
classical Mooney method [17]. However, the classical               which the data were recorded online. The slurry was
Mooney method cannot be used in the non-Newtonian                  pumped through the test section straight pipe (1.8 m)
solid–liquid fluid with a significant immigration of                 by a 2 m3/h screw pump with a frequency converter
particles. A modified Mooney method was developed                   to regulate the flow rate. The water cooling system
by Jastrzebski et al. [18] for the generalized Newtonian           was installed in the pipeline to control the slurry
fluids, and it built the relationship of slip velocity and          temperature. All the experiments were operated at
flow dimension [19]. Tikhonov regularization method                 25 ± 1°C. Before each experiment, the slurry was
developed by Yeow et al. [20,21] has been widely used              stirred and pumped for more than 0.5 h to allow it to
to analyze the experimental data to calculate the slip             homogenize the slurry. In addition, each test was
characteristics of a fluid relating to phase separation,            repeated twice to ensure the accuracy of the
i.e. particle immigration and sedimentation, and                   experimental data.
changes in local solid concentration [11,12,22]. This
method is modified from classical Mooney method,
and the results of slip characterization do not depend             Materials
on the assumed rheological constitutive equation and
data extrapolation.                                                Petroleum coke–water slurry was prepared by blending
   In this study, the true rheological characteristics,            pulverized petroleum coke (obtained from Jinling
drag reduction behavior, and resistance properties of              Petro-Chemistry Company, Nanjing, China), tap water,
PCWS flowing in straight pipelines under different                  and chemical additives (stabilizer and anionic surface
flow conditions (solid loading, velocity, and pipe inner            active agents, obtained from Nanjing University) in a
diameter) were investigated using the Tikhonov                     slurry tank. Weighed tap water was first added into
regularization method. Additionally, the prediction of             the tank, and then, the speed of agitator was set to
the friction factor in straight pipeline by applying               100 rpm/min. Subsequently, the petroleum coke
generalized Reynolds number for non-Newtonian                      particles and a chemical additive were placed into the
fluids was developed.                                               tank. The ratio of additive was kept at 3 wt‰ based
                                                                   on the mass of petroleum coke for all PCWS. The
                                                                   mixture was stirred using an agitator at 100 rpm for
EXPERIMENTAL                                                       1 h. Flow behaviors of PCWS were investigated at
                                                                   three solid loading at 59.8, 61.1, and 63.4 wt%,
Experimental setup                                                 respectively. The particle size distribution of petroleum
                                                                   coke is shown in Fig. 2. Petroleum coke particles
The schematic of the closed-loop pipeline is shown in              exhibit a typical bimodal distribution, and more than
Fig. 1. The experiment setup consists of a screw pump,             80% of the particles are less than 200 μm.
             8V 8us ðτ w Þ 4 τw 2
               ¼          þ 3 ∫τ¼0 τ γðτ Þdτ             (1)     where Reμe is the Reynolds number calculated by the
             D     D       τw
                                                                 effective viscosity μe which is defined as the ratio of
                                                                 wall shear stress and apparent shear rate 8Vc/D [28].
    where V is the mean velocity, D is pipe internal
diameter, and 8V/D is apparent shear rate; 8usDðτw Þ is the
                                                                                           τw               τ 4w
contribution of wall slip behavior; us(τ w) is the wall slip                         μe ¼ 8V c  ¼     τw 2                   (3)
velocity and function of wall shear stress τ w;                                                D      4∫τ¼0 τ γðτ Þdτ
 4 τw 2
τ 3w ∫τ¼0 τ γðτ Þdτ is ascribed to the shear flow and only
function of local wall shear stress. The Tikhonov
regularization method was applied to solve Eqn (1)
using many sets of data from different internal                                          τ w =μe 8V c =D
                                                                            M¼                  ¼        ¼ 1  us =V           (4)
diameters. The solution of the Tikhonov regularization                                   8V=D     8V=D
method is to discretize the right two terms of Eqn (1) in
the range of wall shear stress and calculate the apparent          Therefore, the generalized Reynolds number for non-
shear rate using the data of Q and ΔP under different            Newtonian fluids exhibiting wall slip phenomenon is
internal diameter. In addition, the calculation should           determined by Eqn (5).
meet the following two conditions: (1) minimum
overall relative error S1 of apparent shear rate between                                      Reμe       ρVD
the calculated value and the experimental value and (2)                             Reg ¼         
                                                                                                 us ¼
                                                                                                                             (5)
the sum of the square S2 of the second derivative of the                                      1V     μe 1  uVs
Method for determination of drag reduction                      overlap, particularly for the 61.1 and 63.4 wt% PCWS.
                                                                For the 63.4 wt% PCWS, the larger the diameter of the
During the transportation of PCWS in the pipelines,             pipe diameter, the greater the wall stress at the same
drag reduction phenomenon takes place due to the                apparent shear rates. The rheological properties of
existence of slip phenomenon near the pipe wall.                slurry should be intrinsic features of the slurry, and the
Drag reduction is defined as the ratio of pressure               flow behavior curves should be independent of the
drop reduction caused by wall slip behavior and                 geometry size [14,19]. Yilmazer et al. [30] and Kalyon [31]
pressure drop of PCWS flowing in the pipelines                   demonstrated that the rheological flow curves for
without wall slip [29].                                         different pipe diameters exhibited a deviation and did
                                        2τ w
                                 fs ¼                   (6)
                                        ρV 2
                                        2τ w
                                fc ¼                    (7)
                                        ρV 2c
                               2
            ΔPc  ΔPs     fs   Vc
       DR ¼           ¼1 ¼1
              ΔPc         fc   V
                   us 2
          ¼1 1                                        (8)
                    V
not overlap at constant apparent shear rate, indicating the     center) when the slurry was flowing, resulting in a
effect of the presence of the apparent wall slip. Barnes        generally relatively thin layer of water near to the pipe
[32]
     also found that the most obvious evidence of the           wall and produced the wall slip phenomenon [35–37]. As
presence of wall slip is obtaining different rheological        the solid loading of PCWS increases, velocity gradients
properties in different-sized geometries. This suggests         increase in the slip layer and the wall slip phenomenon
that there is the wall slip behavior in the PCWS flowing.        gets enhanced. Flow behavior curves obtained based on
For the concentrated suspensions, the ‘slip layer’              the assumption that the PCWS flowing in the pipelines
adjacent to the wall is generated by the migration of the       does not have wall slip phenomenon deviate from the
solid particles. It will decrease the viscosity of slurry       true flow behaviors. The stronger the wall slip is, the
and friction loss and has strong influence on the                deviation is more apparent.
rheological properties. In addition, the factors affecting         The experimental data were analyzed using a
wall slip include [24,33,34] particle size, concentration of    numerical method based on Tikhonov regularization
slurry, dimensions of the measuring geometries,                 to solve Eqn (1), and the true rheological characteristics
temperature, and shear stress. From Fig. 4, the flow             of PCWS are shown in Fig. 5(a). The flow curves of
behavior curves diverged more significantly for PCWS             three solid loading PCWS obtained from different
at high solid loading than that for PCWS at low solid           diameter overlap closely, suggesting that the effect of
loading, suggesting that the wall slip behavior became          wall slip on the flow curves was modified. In addition,
more significant on the PCWS with the higher solid               the plot of viscosity and shear rate is also displayed in
loading. The particles in the high shear rate region (near      Fig. 5(b). The shear viscosity of PCWS is influenced
the pipe wall) were migrated to low shear rate region (the      by solid loading and shear rates. At a PCWS solid
                                                                loading of 59.8 wt%, the shear viscosity is insensitive
                                                                to the shear rates and has the similar shear properties
                                                                as Newtonian fluids. When the solid loading of PCWS
                                                                is 61.1 wt%, PCWS becomes a dilatant fluid, and its
                                                                shear viscosity increases significantly with shear rates.
                                                                PCWS changes from a dilatant fluid to a pseudo-plastic
                                                                fluid when the shear rates increase for a solid loading of
                                                                63.4 wt%. Galindo-Rosales et al. [38] also found that
                                                                some shear thickening non-Newtonian fluids exhibited
                                                                complex rheological properties. Slurry first exhibits
                                                                shear thinning at low shear rate, followed by shear
                                                                thickening when shear rate exceeds a critical value,
                                                                and a subsequent shear thinning at high shear rates.
                                                                The variation trend of shear viscosity vs. shear rates
                                                                for slurry flowing in the pipe is controlled by two
                                                                forces: repulsion and hydrodynamic forces [39]. When
                                                                the interactions between particles are dominated by
                                                                repulsion forces, the forces keep particles as far away
                                                                as possible from each other. In addition, the slurry flow
                                                                arises in the form of particles moving into adjacent
                                                                vacancies, resulting in an extremely high but finite
                                                                viscosity of slurry. As the hydrodynamic forces
                                                                dominate the interactions, the particles with small
                                                                space in the direction of shear are forced into layers.
                                                                However, the space between the layers is larger, which
                                                                brings about a lower viscosity than the ordered three-
                                                                dimensional situation. In a flow of slurry, different
                                                                forces control the different shear rate regions. The main
                                                                parameters that control the variation trends are particle
                                                                size distribution, solid loading, particle shape, and
                                                                interaction between particles [40].
                                                                   The rheological properties of PCWS is very
                                                                complicated and controlled by the two forces: repulsion
                                                                and hydrodynamic forces in the pipe flow. When the
Figure 5. True rheological of petroleum coke–water slurry       solid loading of PCWS is 59.8 wt%, the particle
flowing in pipline. (a) Shear rate vs. shear stress. (b) Shear   spacing is large, and the interactions between the
rate vs. true shear viscosity.                                  particles are weak as observed in Fig. 5. Hydrodynamic
© 2017 Curtin University and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.                                          Asia-Pac. J. Chem. Eng. (2017)
                                                                                                            DOI: 10.1002/apj
X. ZHANG ET AL.                                                             Asia-Pacific Journal of Chemical Engineering
f ¼ 16=Reg (9)
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© 2017 Curtin University and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.                                                    Asia-Pac. J. Chem. Eng. (2017)
                                                                                                                      DOI: 10.1002/apj
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© 2017 Curtin University and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.                                                   Asia-Pac. J. Chem. Eng. (2017)
                                                                                                                     DOI: 10.1002/apj