Experimental Investigation of Large Particle Slurry Transport in Vertically Oscillating Pipe for Subsea Mining

For subsea mining, it is important to predict the pressure loss in oscillating pipes for the safe and reliable operation of ore lifting as well as the design of lifting system. In the present paper, the authors focused on the internal flow in vertical lifting pipe oscillating in the axial direction and carried out slurry transport experiment to investigate the effects of pipe oscillation on the pressure loss. The spherical alumina beads and glass beads were used as the solid particles in the experiment, and the oscillating periods and amplitudes of pipe model as well as the solid concentrations and the mean slurry velocities were varied. The time-averaged components of hydraulic gradient calculated by the prediction method for the steady flow proposed in the past by the authors agreed well with the experimental ones. As for the fluctuating components of hydraulic gradient, the calculation results using a homogeneous mixture model were compared with the experimental data. The comparison result indicated that the homogeneous mixture model would be applicable to the prediction of pressure loss in the vertical pipe oscillating in the axial direction.