Towards the modeling of the effect of turbulent water batches on the flow of slurries in horizontal pipes using CFD

The paper presents three-dimensional CFD analysis of two-phase water-slurry flows through horizontal pipes. The pulp is transported through batches separated by water to control the quality of the slurry flow. Water pushes the batch of the slurry to the terminal station and assures the separation between the different volumes of slurry in the case of several batches. To our knowledge, that is the first time such a study is conducted. Parametric analysis was conducted to evaluate the sensitivity of simulation results to various input parameters and to determine appropriate default parameters and methodologies for predicting the different properties of concentration distribution of slurry flow through pipeline. Study of flow turbulence is the highlight of this paper as not many researchers have presented this aspect of slurry flows. It is observed during this study that turbulence prevents the settling of particles of slurry and its diffusion into the water. Further, the effect of turbulence is well observed with the extension of the VOF model that takes better account of the turbulent molecular diffusivity between the water and slurry phases.