Investigation Using Polymer Additives to Mitigate Erosion in Multiphase Turbulent Pipe Flow

• Author / Creator

  Jami, Rafat

• Long chained polymers were evaluated for their impact on reducing pipe erosion during two-phase flow. The research study was compartmentalized into three categories. One of the components of this study investigated the erosion of different materials in an attempt to find a faster eroding substitute to carbon steel. This would allow for faster testing times and thus a larger amount of tests during the timespan of this study. The initial two materials that were proposed as substitutes included Al-6061 T6 allow and a polyurethane (PU) coating along with the baseline A106 carbon steel (CS). A Toroid Wheel tester (TWT) allowed screening of materials before moving to the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) recirculating pipe flow loop. The PU coated samples did not exhibit similar behavior; polyvinylchloride (PVC) was used as a replacement. Each material was subjected to a 300 hour test of recirculating slurry at SRC. Mass measurements were taken before and after the test to calculate the average wear rate of each pipe material. The PVC and CS showed a linear increase in wear rate in respect to the solids frictional pressure loss. The Al 6061 data did not show a consistent trend and was ruled out as a substitute. PVC proved to be a viable substitute material to CS for wear testing.The second stage of the study investigated the effect of chemical properties such as anionic charge and molecular weight on the drag reduction (DR) performance of polyacrylamides (PAM). A small apparatus was required to run screening tests quickly in order to find ideal polymeric solutions. An in-house designed Taylor Couette device (TCD) was built. The PAM based solutions, ranging from 10% to 50% anionicity, showed a peak DR at 20-30% for multiple molecular weights in pipe flow tests. To compare the TCD and pipe loop tests, a large sweep of operating speeds of both devices was carried out and compared using one consistent PAM solution. It was found, that the turbulent length scale of pipe flow was lower than the TCD tests and allowed for the polymers to fully stretch and distinguish performance differences which was not possible in the TCD due to a lower wall shear stress and a lower degree of turbulence. The final segment of this study utilized the PAM polymers in the SRC flow loop. In order to account for polymer degradation, an injection system was utilized to hold the DR percentage constant. The DR at both diameter test sections were in agreement at 25%, and wear reduction of 40 to 70% was witnessed in all three materials. It was concluded that polymer additives reduces the amount of wear in the pipes.  

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Multiphase
  • Turbulent
  • Pipeline
  • Polymers
  • Slurry
  • Erosion

• Graduation date

  Spring 2019

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-qd9v-f688

• License

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