| The Canadian oil sand industry operates three phase gas-liquid-solid hydrotransport pipelines to transport oil sand ore from mines to processing facilities. This hydrotransport process is critical to downstream separation activities, given the conditioning steps that occur within it: (i) lump ablation, (ii) bitumen liberation and (iii) bitumen-air attachment. Achieving the appropriate hydrodynamic conditions within the pipe to promote the conditioning steps has been a challenge. Although operational targets are known, e.g. suspended solids and dispersed bubble flow, determining and furthermore monitoring online behaviour has not been satisfactorily achieved. To solve this, a novel modelling technique using digital signal processing was developed, and tested on gas-liquid and liquid-solid horizontal flows. Results show the model accurately describes the existence and transition between dispersed bubble and intermittent flows in the gas-liquid system. For slurry flow, the model accurately distinguishes a moving bed from a suspended flow, but does not describe the transition. |
