Computation of pressure drop and heat transfer in gas-solid suspension with small sized particles in a horizontal pipe

Abstract

The present work deals with the investigation of the gas-solid flow in a horizontal pipe using the Eulerian-Eulerian modeling approach for a particle size range of $\mathrm{2\hspace{0.17em}}\mu m\le d_p\le \mathrm{20\hspace{0.17em}}\mu m$ at solid volume fractions of 0.001 and 0.10 which is missing in the existing literature. An extensive study has been performed to investigate the effect of the particle-wall collision and particle-particle collision, solid volume fraction, particle size and inlet slip ratio on two-phase pressure drop and Nusselt number. The effect of the collisions is found to be prominent only at higher solid volume fraction (10%). Under the particle size considered in the present study, interestingly, the pressure drop shows completely opposite trend under two different solid volume fraction situations which has not been reported in earlier studies due to the consideration of relatively large-sized particles. On the other hand, the Nusselt number gets reduced with an increase in the particle size. The effect of the inter-particle collision is found to affect the pressure drop significantly under the current operating conditions. Both the pressure drop and Nusselt number increases with an increase in the solid volume fraction. Similarly, an increase in the inlet slip ratio increases the Nusselt number, whereas it reduces the pressure drop.

Keywords:

• Gas-solid suspension
• Eulerian-Eulerian approach
• horizontal pipe
• pressure drop
• Nusselt number