| In this research, two areas important to the analysis and prediction of slurry friction losses during pipeline flow were studied. A correlation was developed to predict the particle friction factor, f s, for prediction of the kinematic friction loss component of slurry friction losses. Methods for determining the maximum particle concentration, C∞ were studied and compared.;Slurries of four particle types: aluminum oxide, petroleum coke, angular sand, and silica flour in water were tested in a 75 mm diameter pipeline loop at different concentrations. These particles were chosen in order to study the effects of particle density and particle size on the kinematic friction loss component of slurry friction losses.;Experiments where pressure loss was measured as a function of velocity were conducted and the data collected were used, along with data previously collected by researchers at the SRC Pipe Flow Technology Centre, to create a new fs correlation. The correlation is logarithmic and covers a wider range of dimensionless particle diameters (d+) than previous correlations.;Four methods were studied for determining C∞: pipeline loop tests, concentric cylinder viscometer tests, settled bed tests, and a semi-empirical correlation. It is recommended that the pipeline method be used to get very accurate predictions of C∞. If pipeline tests cannot be conducted, the settled bed tests and the Hoffmann- Finkers correlation had the least error. The viscometer method is not recommended due to its inability to accurately predict C∞ for particles other than angular sand.;Future work should be performed to expand the new fs correlation for complex slurries containing particles with broad or multimodal size distributions and slurries containing particles with different densities. |
