(338c) Slurry Flow Modeling Using Eulerian/Lagrangian CFD

An attempt has been made to develop a general model for slurry flow transport in pipes using a Eulerian/Lagrangian CFD code. The main characeteristics to be modeled are the solid concentration profile and pressure drop. Similar efforts can be found with Eulerian/Eulerian approaches. However, several drawbacks hinders the extensive use of the Eulerian/Eulerian approach, namely, the difficulty in describing the particle size distribution (PSD) and the solution sensitivity to mesh resolution and numerical schemes. With the Eulerian/Lagrangian approach, the PSD can be naturally included and the solution is in general much less sensitive to numerical scheme and grid resolution. CPFD's Barracuda software is adopted for the modeling work in this study. Although Barracuda has been extensively validated for gas-solid flows, its applications to slurry flows have been limited. In this work, we attempt to devise a general model for solid-solid interactions that can be used to correctly account for solid concentration profiles and pressure drops under various pipe diameters, flow velocities, solid loadings and PSDs observed in many experiments. The developed model can be used for applications in many areas, including oil sand processing and hydraulic fracturing for oil extraction, and slurry catalyst cracking for heavy oil in the refineries.