Slurry flow, process pipe

Sizing, safety relief, 436, 437-441 API liquid valve, 444 Balanced valves, 441 Conventional valves, 438 Critical back pressure, 440 Effects of two-phase flow, 437 Hydraulic expansion, 441 Rupture disks, 434 Sub-critical flow, 449 Slurry flow, process pipe, 142-147 Regimes, 143... 

Cross-Flow Filtration in Porous Pipes. Another way of limiting cake growth is to pump the slurry through porous pipes at high velocities of the order of thousands of times the filtration velocity through the walls of the pipes. This is ia direct analogy with the now weU-estabHshed process of ultrafiltration which itself borders on reverse osmosis at the molecular level. The three processes are closely related yet different ia many respects. 

One of the important stages for a successfiil operation of a spray drier scrubber is slurry preparation in lime processes. As lime cannot be simply dissolved in water it must be ground. Particle size and slaking temperature are important parameters. Sahar and Kehat (1991) give 1.46/im as recommended average particle size for the lime slurry to be fed to the system. Unless the slurry is in a homogeneous form, the extensive surface area required for a complete gas-solid contact cannot be achieved by atomization. Plugging problems may occur in pipes in which lime slurry flows. 

Measurement by Electromagnetic Effects. The magnetic flow meter is a device that measures the potential developed when an electrically conductive flow moves through an imposed magnetic field. The voltage developed is proportional to the volumetric flow rate of the fluid and the magnetic field strength. The process fluid sees only an empty pipe so that the device has a very low pressure drop. The device is useful for the measurement of slurries and other fluid systems where an accumulation of another phase could interfere with flow measurement by other devices. The meter must be installed in a section of pipe that is much less conductive than the fluid. This limits its appHcabiHty in many industrial situations. 

Reaction times can be as short as 10 minutes in a continuous flow reactor (1). In a typical batch cycle, the slurry is heated to the reaction temperature and held for up to 24 hours, although hold times can be less than an hour for many processes. After reaction is complete, the material is cooled, either by batch cooling or by pumping the product slurry through a double-pipe heat exchanger. Once the temperature is reduced below approximately 100°C, the slurry can be released through a pressure letdown system to ambient pressure. The product is then recovered by filtration (qv). A series of wash steps may be required to remove any salts that are formed as by-products. The clean filter cake is then dried in a tray or tunnel dryer or reslurried with water and spray dried. 

One of the most efficient implementations of the slurry process was developed by Phillips Petroleum Company in 1961 (Eig. 5). Nearly one-third of all HDPE produced in the 1990s is by this process. The reactor consists of a folded loop with four long (- 50 m) vertical mns of a pipe (0.5—1.0 m dia) coimected by short horizontal lengths (around 5 m) (58—60). The entire length of the loop is jacketed for cooling. A slurry of HDPE and catalyst particles in a light solvent (isobutane or isopentane) circulates by a pump at a velocity of 5—12 m/s. This rapid circulation ensures a turbulent flow, removes the heat of polymeriza tion, and prevents polymer deposition on the reactor walls. 

Another angular momentum mass flowmeter was attempted using the principle of a gyroscope. It consisted of a pipe shaped in the form of a circle formed in a plane perpendicular to the direction of the process flow. If this pipe is oscillated around one axis, a precession-type moment is produced about the axis perpendicular to it, which is proportional to mass flow. The gyroscopic mass flowmeter can handle slurries in medium pressure and temperature ranges, but its industrial use is very limited because of its high cost and inability to handle high flow rates. 

Particle-fluid flow has been in existence in industrial processes since the nineteenth century. Applications include pneumatic conveying, which deals with pipe flow of solid material transported by a gas, slurry transport and processing of solids in a fluid. The necessity of predicting blower or pumping power for a given amount of material to be conveyed led to measurements of pressure drops and attempts in the correlation of physical parameters. That anomaly exists in the correlation in terms of simple parameter is one of the motivations for the exploration into the details of distributions in density and velocity and the present state of development of instrumentation. 

Ultrasonic Flowmeters. Ultrasonic methods have been used to measure flow velocity and concentration in slurry pipelines (22) and emulsion pipelines (65). There are three methods of ultrasonic flow meter applications transmission of ultrasonic wave, beam deflection, and frequency shift method (22). The frequency shift method (the ultrasonic Doppler flowmeter) consists of a transducer and an electronic control box. The transducer is either clamped on the outside of the pipe or inserted into the pipe so that it is flush with the inside of the pipe wall. The transducer comprises the sensors to transmit and receive the Doppler signal. These sensors are either in a single transducer or in two separate transducers. The control box processes transmitted and received signals (Figure 25). 

There are two basic (and interrelated) useful parameters for an open-channel slurry system design the minimum slope (to maintain slurry suspension) of straight lengths of launder, Smin (usually expressed as a percentage), and the velocity head corresponding to the minimum slurry velocity, K (expressed in metres), is often quoted as part of process technology, and may be arrived at directly by practical experience, whereas K is usually derived. The parameters have an approximate theoretical relationship, and the minimum slurry velocity Kmin is essentially the same as the minimum velocity to avoid settlement in full-flow pipes of comparable diameter, in terms of wetted perimeter. 

In a typical slurry pipeline design situation, the flowrates and solids concentrations are fixed by process material balances and equipment performance specifications. In these circumstances, a primary goal in design is selection of the optimum pipe diameter. For slurries in turbulent flow, the optimum transport condition almost invariably occurs when all the particles are suspended but moving at the lowest possible mean velocity. By operating the pipeline at the slurry deposition velocity, the frictional energy losses and wear are minimized and the whole of the pipe cross-section is available for flow. 

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