Experimental Studies on Hydraulic Lifting of Solid-liquid Two-phase Flow

Experimental Studies on Hydraulic Lifting of Solid-liquid Two-phase Flow

Experimental studies with 4.3m and enlarged 30m in height have been conducted to investigate the flow characteristics of solid-liquid mixture in a lifting pipe and to acquire the design data for sea tests that will be performed in the future. From the results, it was observed that the more the discharged volume fraction and the solid diameter increase, the more the hydraulic gradient increases. Also, the more the diameter of the lifting pipe increases, the smaller the friction loss, and consequently, the less pressure drop and hydraulic gradient. From the enlarged hydraulic pumping experiments, it was shown that the results of the experiments were matched with those of the numerical model previously developed. On the bases of these studies, we plan to conduct further experiments and validate the hydraulic pumping model.