Experimental and numerical study of installing a dune model in a 90? bend in the horizontal-vertical pneumatic conveying system

In the pneumatic conveying process, particles move to the bend under the influence of inertia to form a particle rope, which will cause serious wear between the particles and the pipe wall, and then the dune model is designed and installed in the 90 degrees bend to reduce energy consumption and wear in this study. Firstly, the minimum pressure drop velocity of particles transported by different size dune models was obtained through experimental study. Then the energy saving mechanism of the dune model is studied by CFD-DEM coupling. The experimental results show that the installation of the dune model reduces the minimum pressure drop velocity. The numerical simulation results show that the number of collisions between the particles and the tube wall in the vertical tube decreases after the installation of the dune model, which reduces the energy loss. Moreover, the increasing of tail size of the dune model is beneficial to the diffusion and acceleration of the particles in the vertical tube. (c) 2022 Chinese Society of Particuology and Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

In this study, a dune model was designed and installed in the bend to reduce energy consumption and wear in the pneumatic conveying process. Experimental and numerical simulation results showed that the installation of the dune model reduced the minimum pressure drop velocity, decreased the number of collisions between particles and the tube wall, and improved particle diffusion and acceleration in the vertical tube.