Hydrodynamic Analysis and Optimal Design of Pipelines Transporting Spherical Capsules

Rapid depletion of energy resources has immensely affected the transportation industry, where the cargo transportation prices are going considerably high. Efforts have been made to develop newer economic and environmental friendly modes of cargo transportation. One such mode is the use of energy contained within fluids that flows in the pipelines for transportation of bulk solids. Bulk solids can be transported for long distances effectively in pipelines. Raw materials can be stored in spherical containers (commonly known as capsules) transported through the pipeline.

For economical and efficient design of any transportation mode, both the local flow characteristics and the global performance parameters need to be investigated. Published literature is severely limited in establishing the effects of local flow features on system characteristics of Hydraulic Capsule Pipelines (HCPs). The present study focuses on using a well validated Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based solver to numerically simulate capsule flow in HCPs for both onshore and offshore applications, including pipe bends. A novel numerical model has been employed in the present study with the aid of the dynamic mesh technique for calculating the pressure and the velocity variations within HCPs with respect to time. The numerical model for capsule flow yields realistic results for the global flow parameters as compared to the experimental data from the test rig developed for capsule flow in the present study.

In order to develop knowledge base covering a wide range of HCPs operating conditions, both horizontal and vertical pipelines including bends have been considered for numerical analysis. The numerical analysis is supported by experimental investigations. After carrying out detailed numerical analysis at component-level, a system-level optimisation study has been carried out in order to optimally design HCPs based on Least-Cost Principle.