Numerical simulation on the flow behavior of ice slurry in piping systems.

The ice slurry, as a cool agent, is widely used in the refrigeration areas, such as the HVAC systems, food cooling area and other fields due to the good quality of the ice slurry. The flow behavior for the ice slurry is analyzed in piping systems to improve the application of the ice slurry in this paper. Three kinds of pipes, namely the straight pipe, the 90° elbow pipe and the T-pipe, are investigated by numerical simulation based on kinetic theory of granular. It was found that for the flow in the straight tubes, the pressure descends down with the increasing distance to the inlet, whose variation trends show good agreements with experimental data. For the flow in the 90° elbow, the image of the second flow is obtained in this paper to describe to the reverse flow super imposed to the main flow. For the flow in the T-pipe, the enthalpy descends down rapidly, which indicates that the energy is lost due to the corners. In addition, this model for the simulation of the flow of ice slurry in piping systems is validated to fit for the study of the pressure field, the velocity field and the variation trends of the enthalpy etc.