PIPE FLOW PROBLEMS WITH FITTINGS

The inclusion of significant fitting friction loss in piping systems requires a somewhat different procedure for the solution of flow problems than that which was used in the absence of fitting losses in Chapter 6. We will consider the same classes of problems as before, i.e. unknown driving force, unknown flow rate, and unknown diameter for Newtonian, power law, and Bingham plastics. The governing equation, as before, is the Bernoulli equation, written in the form 

The a s are the kinetic energy correction factors at the upstream and downstream points (recall that a = 2 for laminar flow and a = 1 for turbulent flow for a Newtonian fluid). 

---

For pipe fittings, valves, and other flow obstructions the traditional method has been to use an equivalent pipe length Lequiv in Equation 4-30. The problem with this method is that the specified length is coupled to the friction factor. An improved approach is to use the 2-K method,s-6 which uses the actual flow path length in Equation 4-30 — equivalent lengths are not used — and provides a more detailed approach for pipe fittings, inlets, and outlets. The 2-K method defines the excess head loss in terms of two constants, the Reynolds number and the pipe internal diameter ... 

As the process model is made more accurate and complicated, you can lose the possibility of obtaining an analytical solution of the optimization problem. For example, if (1) the pressure losses through the pipe fittings and valves are included in the model, (2) the pump investment costs are included as a separate term with a cost exponent (n) that is not equal to 1.0, (3) elevation changes must be taken into account, (4) contained solids are present in the flow, or (5) significant changes in density occur, the optimum diameter will have to be calculated numerically. 

---