Numerical Investigation of Ice Slurry Flow in a Horizontal Pipe

Abstract

In the last decade, phase changing material slurry (PCMS) gained much attention as a cooling medium due to its high energy storage capacity and transportability. However the flow of PCM slurry is a complex phenomenon as it affected by various parameters, i.e. fluid properties, velocity, particle size and concentration etc.. In the present work ice is used as a PCM and numerical investigation of heterogeneous slurry flow has been carried out using Eulerian KTGF model in a horizontal pipe. Firstly the present model is validated with existing experiment results available in the literature, and then model is applied to the present problem. Results show that, flow is almost homogeneous for ethanol based ice slurry with particle diameter of 0.1 mm at the velocity of 1 m/s. It is also found that ice particle distribution is more uniform at higher velocity, concentration of ice and ethanol in slurry. Results also show that ice concentration increases on the top of the pipe, and the effect of particle wall collision is more significant at higher particle diameter.