8. Design Example
Find optimal size of a pipeline transporting aluminium ore slurry with particles of size 2mm in the solid
throughput range from 50Kg/sec to 250Kg/sec.
Computations have been made for Q=50kg/sec up to 250kg/sec for the given design example. Table 2
shows that for particles of diameter 2mm and a throughput of 50 kg/sec of solids, the optimal diameter of
the pipeline is 0.14 m. The corresponding values of the flow velocity and solid concentration are 3.17 m/sec and 21.3 % respectively. With increasing solid throughput rate it can be seen that the optimal
diameter increases and flow velocities also show an increasing trend. Furthermore, increase in the solid
throughput in the pipeline decreases the volume fraction of the solid phase. The average value of the solid
phase volume fraction is 20.1%.