A Numerical Simulation of Swirling Flow Pneumatic Conveying in a Horizontal Pipeline

Abstract

A numerical simulation for axial and swirling flow pneumatic conveying in a horizontal pipe is carried out with an Eulerian approach for the gas and a stochastic Lagrangian approach for particles, where particle-particle and particle-wall collisions are taken into consideration. The k-ε turbulence model is used to characterize the time and length scales of the gas-phase tubulence. Models are proposed for predicting the particle source and additional pressure loss. The numerical results are presented for polyethylene pellets of 3.1 mm diameter conveyed through a pipeline of 13 m in length with an inner diameter of 80 mm. It is found that numerical results agree with our measurements.