Medium consistency technology was used to pump, stock, beat, bleach and filter pulp suspensions at a medium concentration in the papermaking industry. When the concentration exceeds 5%, it stops flowing and acts like a solid. An important property of the fluidization of pulp suspension permits the use of centrifugal pump to transport pulp suspension. Based on the experimental data of medium consistency pulp suspension, the Herschel-Buckley model of non-Newtonian fluid was modified. The rheological behavior of the pulp suspension, bleached softwood kraft pulp suspension (SBK), hardwood pulp suspension (HW), thermal mechanical pulp suspension (TMP), and stone ground wood pulp suspension (SGW) in a medium consistency pump (MC pump) with a turbulence generator were simulated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. A modified Herschel-Buckley model was used to approximate rheological behaviors of medium consistency pulp fibre suspension. The effects of shear stress, pump speed, fluid rheology, and the onset of fluidization were explored in the turbulence generator.
Medium-consistency technology is known as the process with high efficiency and low pollution. The gas distribution was simulated in the medium-consistency pump with different degas hole positions. Rheological behaviors of pulp suspension were obtained by experimental test. A modified Herschel-Bulkley model and the Eulerian gas-liquid two-phase flow model were utilized to approximately represent the behaviors of the medium-consistency pulp suspension. The results show that when the relative position is 0.53, the gas volume ratio is less than 0.1% at the pump outlet and 9.8% at the vacuum inlet, and the pump head is at the maximum. Because of the different numbers of the impeller blades and turbulence blades and the asymmetric volute structure, the gas is distributed unevenly in the impeller. In addition, the pump performance was tested in experiment and the results are used to validate computational fluid dynamics outcomes.
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