An Experimental and CFD Analysis of Pressure Drop Prediction in Dense-Phase Pneumatic Conveying of Fine Powders

Abstract

The present research work delves into CFD investigation of pressure drop for dense phase pneumatic conveying system of fine powders. In this study Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) principles have been used to determine the pressure drop across two straight pipes to explore the capabilities of simulation software for investigating into Pneumatic Conveying Characteristics (PCC) for fluidized dense phase pneumatic conveying of fly ash (mean particle diameter: 30µm; particle density: 2300kg/m3; loose poured bulk density: 700kg/m3). A commercial software code; Fluent® has been used for the investigation. Eulerian approach has been used for the simulation and the results show that the tested software can be used as an effective tool to determine the pressure drop in pneumatic conveying systems. Straight pipe pressure transducers installed at the two sections were used to provide the experimental pressure drop per unit length, which was used to form PCC for the experimental data. The results for pressure drop per unit length obtained from the simulations agreed reasonably well with experimental values of pressure drop, where average errors for both set of straight pipe simulations (69mm I.D. ×6m and 105mm I.D. ×6m) were found to be 21.55% and 15.66% respectively. PCC obtained from simulations were almost identical to the experimental PCC, which shows that though simulations were not performed on the original length of the pipe but still simulation results of pressure drop are in good agreement with the experimental results. The results of the effect of particle diameter, particle density and particle volume fraction on the pressure drop were also analysed. Also study of contours of flyash volume fraction for different particle diameter and particle density are reported in this study. The results of experimental PCCs of the research work carried on Thapar University pneumatic conveying test setup 50mm I.D. ×69m for grey cement and white cement as the conveying materials are also presented in this study.