Abstract.A capsule pipeline transports material or cargo in capsules propelled by fluid flowing through a pipeline. The cargo may either be contained in capsules (such as wheat enclosed inside sealed cylindrical containers), or may itself be the capsules (such as coal compressed into the shape of a cylinder or sphere). As the concept of capsule transportation is relatively new, the capsule pipelines need to be designed optimally for commercial viability. An optimal design of such a pipeline would have minimum pressure drop due to the presence of the solid medium in the pipeline, which corresponds to minimum head loss and hence minimum pumping power required to drive the capsules and the transporting fluid. The total cost for the manufacturing and maintenance of such pipelines is yet another important variable that needs to be considered for the widespread commercial acceptance of capsule transporting pipelines. To address this, the optimisation technique presented here is based on the least-cost principle. Pressure drop relationships have been incorporated to calculate the pumping requirements for the system. The maintenance and manufacturing costs have been computed separately to analyse their effects on the optimisation process. A design example has been included to show the usage of the model presented. The results indicate that for a specific throughput, there exists an optimum diameter of the pipeline for which the total cost for the piping system is at its minimum.
Abstract. Capsule pipeline research involves the study of the flow in a pipe of a long train of spherical or cylindrical capsules (hollow containers) filled with minerals or other materials including hazardous liquids. The behavior of the capsule train will depend upon the behavior of each capsule in the train and the hydrodynamic influence of one capsule on another. Designers are in need of a general correlation to calculate pressure drop in a capsule pipeline. Researchers, so far, have used rather simplified empirical and semi-empirical correlations for pressure drop calculations, the range and application of which is fairly limited. A mathematical correlation developed for pressure drop in cylindrical capsule of equi-density as its carrying medium is presented here. Based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) a numerical solution has been obtained from the equations governing the turbulent flow around a concentric cylindrical capsule in a hydraulically smooth pipe section. The diameter of the pipe used in present study is 0.1m while that of capsules are in the range of 50-80% of the pipe diameter. The investigation was carried out in the practical range of 0.2 ≤V b ≥ 1.6 m/sec. The computationally obtained data set over a wide range of flow conditions have then been used to develop a rigorous model for pressure drop. Using this model the pressure drop along the pipeline can be computed which then can be used to calculate pumping requirements.
IntroductionDue to their relatively simple shape, economic design and ease of connecting the capsules to form a train of cargo etc. cylindrical capsules have always been the first choice of the capsule transporting industries throughout the world. Kroonenberg [1] developed a mathematical relationship to predict the pressure drop, and hence the head loss in capsule transporting pipelines carrying cylindrical capsules. For simplicity, only horizontal pipelines were considered. The relationship developed by Kroonenberg was based on the fact that the presence of the solid phase in the pipeline increases the friction factor and hence the pressure drop. Moody's chart was used to calculate the friction factor.
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