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Very coarse basalt-water slurry forming fully stratified flow with a sliding bed and producing considerable friction loss was tested in a laboratory pipe. A considerably finer fraction of sand was added in steps to gradually increase the concentration of this fraction in the flowing slurry. The frictional pressure drop was measured together with the slurry discharge and slurry density. Furthermore, solid particles and their motion were observed at the bottom of the pipe. This observation indicated that finer particles in basalt-based bimodal slurry flows positioned themselves below the coarse particles at the pipe wall. The experimental results show that a quite small amount of fines is sufficient to produce a considerable friction reduction in settling slurry flow. Furthermore, the results indicate that there is a certain optimum quantity of fines at which the maximum reduction is reached and further addition of the fines does not bring any further improvement.

Sand-water slurry was investigated on an experimental pipe loop of inner diameter D = 100 mm with the horizontal, inclined, and vertical smooth pipe sections. A narrow particle size distribution silica sand of mean diameter 0.87 mm was used. The experimental investigation focused on the effects of pipe inclination, overall slurry concentration, and mean velocity on concentration distribution and deposition limit velocity. The measured concentration profiles showed different degrees of stratification for the positive and negative pipe inclinations. The degree of stratification depended on the pipe inclination and on overall slurry concentration and velocity. The ascending flow was less stratified than the corresponding descending flow, the difference increasing from horizontal flow up to an inclination angle of about +30°. The deposition limit velocity was sensitive to the pipe inclination, reaching higher values in the ascending than in the horizontal pipe. The maximum deposition limit value was reached for an inclination angle of about +25°, and the limit remained practically constant in value, about 1.25 times higher than that in the horizontal pipe. Conversely, in the descending pipe, the deposition limit decreased significantly with the negative slopes and tended to be zero for an inclination angle of about −30°, where no stationary bed was observed.

For the safe and economical design and operation of freight pipelines it is necessary to know slurry flow behaviour in inclined pipe sections, which often form significant part of pipelines transporting solids. Fine-grained settling slurry was investigated on an experimental pipe loop of inner diameter D = 100 mm with the horizontal and inclined pipe sections for pipe slopes ranging from −45° to +45°. The slurry consisted of water and glass beads with a narrow particle size distribution and mean diameter d50 = 180 µm. The effect of pipe inclination, mean transport volumetric concentration, and slurry velocity on flow behaviour, pressure drops, deposition limit velocity, and concentration distribution was studied. The study revealed a stratified flow pattern of the studied slurry in inclined pipe sections. Frictional pressure drops in the ascending pipe were higher than that in the descending pipe, the difference decreased with increasing velocity and inclination. For inclination less than about 25° the effect of pipe inclinations on deposition limit velocity and local concentration distribution was not significant. For descending pipe section with inclinations over −25° no bed deposit was observed.

This paper deals with studying of two topics – measuring of velocity profile deformation behind a over-flooded construction and modelling of this velocity profile deformation by computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Numerical simulations with an unsteady RANS models - Standard k-ε, Realizable k-ε, Standard k-ω and Reynolds stress models (ANSYS Fluent v.18) and experimental measurements in a laboratory flume (using ADV) were performed. Results of both approaches showed and affirmed presence of velocity profile deformation behind the obstacle, but some discrepancies between the measured and simulated values were also observed. With increasing distance from the obstacle, the differences between the simulation and the measured data increase and the results of the numerical models are no longer usable.

Mixing of immiscible liquid-liquid system is the crucial process for many branches of industry. The main purpose of this process is to increase mass transfer efficiency in processes occurring in chemical and metallurgical industry. The knowledge of drop size and surface area of drops is important for the determination of mass transfer time. The aim of this contribution is to study drop size time evolution in immiscible liquid-liquid system agitated by high-shear Sawtooth impeller in baffled cylindrical vessel. The drop size evaluation was investigated in three different regions of interest. The time evolution of drop size was described by the kinetic model proposed by Hong and Lee (1983) for each region of interest. Simultaneously, the drop size distribution (DSD) was determined and compared for each regions of interest. The time evolution of drop sizes was investigated by non-invasive measurement directly in control volume. The images of illuminated region of interest were captured by a high-speed camera. The captured images were processed by the Image Analysis method.

A three-dimensional numerical simulation of particle motion in a pipe with a rough bed is presented. The simulation based on the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) employs the hybrid diffuse bounce-back approach to model moving boundaries. The bed of the pipe is formed by stationary spherical particles of the same size as the moving particles. Particle movements are induced by gravitational and hydrodynamic forces. To evaluate the hydrodynamic forces, the Momentum Exchange Algorithm is used. The LBM unified computational frame makes it possible to simulate both the particle motion and the fluid flow and to study mutual interactions of the carrier liquid flow and particles and the particle–bed and particle–particle collisions. The trajectories of simulated and experimental particles are compared. The Particle Tracking method is used to track particle motion. The correctness of the applied approach is assessed.

The radial discharge jet from a standard Rushton turbine was investigated by the Laser Doppler Anemometry (LDA) method. Several distances from the impeller blades (in the radial direction) were chosen for the measurement of axial profiles: all three velocity components (radial, tangential and axial) were measured at each point of the axial profile. The obtained velocity time records were analysed and averaged results were decomposed into three parts: mean ensembleaverage, random and periodic. The ratio of the derived periodic part of the velocity was evaluated in each measurement point and for all velocity components. The obtained results indicate the regions where the periodic part of the velocity has significant effect and where the contribution of this part is almost negligible. Although the values of the periodic part of all velocity components have a rather similar range, the spatial distributions are different in the investigated region.

The effect of solid concentration and mixture velocity on the flow behaviour, pressure drops, and concentration distribution of coarse particle-water mixtures in horizontal, vertical, and inclined smooth stainless steel pipes of inner diameter D = 100 mm was experimentally investigated. Graded basalt pebbles were used as solid particles. The study revealed that the coarse-grained particle-water mixtures in the horizontal and inclined pipes were significantly stratified. The solid particles moved principally in a layer close to the pipe invert; however for higher and moderate flow velocities, particle saltation became the dominant mode of particle conveyance. Frictional pressure drops in the horizontal pipe were found to be markedly higher than in the vertical pipe, while the frictional pressure drops in the ascending pipe increased with inclination angle up to about 30°.

The effect of slurry velocity and mean concentration of heterogeneous particle-water mixture on flow behaviour and structure in the turbulent regime was studied in horizontal and inclined pipe sections of inner diameter D = 100 mm. The stratified flow pattern of heterogeneous particle-water mixture in the inclined pipe sections was revealed. The particles moved mostly near to the pipe invert. Concentration distribution in ascending and descending vertical pipe sections confirmed the effect of fall velocity on particle-carrier liquid slip velocity and increase of in situ concentration in the ascending pipe section. Slip velocity in two-phase flow, which is defined as the velocity difference between the solid and liquid phase, is one of mechanism of particle movement in two-phase flow. Due to the slip velocity, there is difference between transport and in situ concentrations, and the slip velocity can be determined from comparison of the in situ and transport concentration. For heterogeneous particle-water mixture flow the slip velocity depends on the flow structure.

Velocity measurements of the flow field in an agitated vessel are necessary for the improvement and better understanding of the mixing processes. The obtained results are used for the calculations of the impeller pumping capacity, comparison of the power consumption etc. We performed various measurements of the local velocities in an agitated vessel final results of which should be processed for several purposes so it was necessary to make an analysis of the obtained data suitability and their quality. Analysed velocity data were obtained from the LDA (Laser Doppler Anemometry) and PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) measurements performed on a standard equipment where the flat bottomed vessel with four baffles was agitated by the six-blade Rushton turbine. The results from both used methods were compared. The frequency analyses were examined as well as the dependency of the data rates, time series lengths etc. The demands for the data processed in the form of the ensemble-averaged results were also established.

During the last years considerable improvement of the derivation of turbulence power spectrum from Laser Doppler Anemometry (LDA) has been achieved. The irregularly sampled LDA data is proposed to approximate by several methods e.g. Lomb-Scargle method, which estimates amplitude and phase of spectral lines from missing data, methods based on the reconstruction of the auto-correlation function (referred to as correlation slotting technique), methods based on the reconstruction of the time series using interpolation between the uneven sampling and subsequent resampling etc. These different methods were used on the LDA data measured in an agitated vessel and the results of the power spectrum calculations were compared. The measurements were performed in the mixing vessel with flat bottom. The vessel was equipped with four baffles and agitated with a six-blade pitched blade impeller. Three values of the impeller speed (Reynolds number) were tested. Long time series of the axial velocity component were measured in selected points. In each point the time series were analyzed and evaluated in a form of power spectrum.