Title: Predicting pressure drop in pneumatic conveying using the discrete element modelling approach

Authors: Vikrant Singh, Simon Lo

Addresses: CD-adapco India, Unit 8, 5th Floor, Navigator Building, International Technology Park, Whitefield Road, Bangalore, 560066 Karnataka, India. ' CD-adapco UK, Trident House, Basil Hill Road, Didcot, OX11 7HJ, UK

Abstract: Pneumatic conveying of solid materials is used in many process industries where solid particles are carried forward in pipes and channels by the fluid. The pressure drop in the system is dependent on a host of parameters such as particle and pipe diameters, particle and fluid properties, pipe roughness and orientation, etc. In this study, the commercial CFD software, STAR-CD is used to model pneumatic conveying in a horizontal pipe. A range of fluid flow rates is studied. Reasonable agreement is obtained between the predicted pressure drop and the experimental data of Marcus et al. (1990) for spherical particles and Vasquez et al. (2008) for non-spherical particles. The sensitivity of the computed results to particle properties and the choice of fluid drag model are also studied.

Keywords: pneumatic conveying; DEM; discrete element modelling; pressure drop; non-spherical particles; CFD; computational fluid dynamics; horizontal pipes; fluid flow rates; particle properties; fluid drag models.

DOI: 10.1504/PCFD.2010.035367

Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, An International Journal, 2010 Vol.10 No.5/6, pp.334 - 340

Published online: 26 Sep 2010 *

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