A COMPUTER-SIMULATION OF DILUTE PNEUMATIC CONVEYING OF GRANULAR-MATERIALS IN PIPE BRANCHES

Controlling the transport of particulate material in pipe networks req uires knowledge of the mass flow rate distribution at pipe bifurcation s. A computational study is made to simulate a turbulent flow of dilut e pneumatic transport of solid particles in a single bifurcation. The KIVA-3 code developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory is used fo r this simulation. The size of the particles and the cross-sectional r atio of the pipe branches at the bifurcation are varied. It is found t hat the ratio of the mass flow rate of the particulate material is not proportional to the area ratio of the pipe branches. The difference b etween the mass flow rate ratio and the area ratio increases as the pa rticle size decreases.