Drag reducing flow of water in forced closed loop circulation system by using sodium dodecyl sulfate additive

Abstract EN

The turbulent flow friction of a water solution with a small amount of surfactant additive is dramatically reduced when compared to that of pure water.

This effect offers a significant reduction in pumping power and energy consumption.

Commercial implementation of drag reducing fluids have proved successful for oil pipeline transportation, district heating and cooling systems, firefighting, sewer throughput, jet cutting, etc.

The investigation was carried out on a facility with a forced closed loop for pressure chop measurements.

A type of anionic surfactant (Sodium dodecyl sulfate) mixed with same weight of counter ion material (Sodium nitrate) was used as a drag reducing additive to tap water at a mass concentration ranged from 50 to 2000 ppm.

Pressure drop data was collected over a 1668 mm flow pipe of carbon steel with 15.8 and 26.6 nun internal diameter and different solution flow rate (up to 8 m / h) at constant temperature of 30 "C (ambient temperature).

The paper focused on calculation of friction factor from experimental data.

It was found that the friction factor values lies near Blass's asymptote for pure solvent, while they positioned towards maximum drag reduction asymptotes when surfactant is added.

A maximum drag reduction percent of about 66 % was obtained by using 2000 ppm surfactant-counter ion aqueous solution.

Also, it was concluded that there is a critical Reynolds number equals to about 96000 not to be exceeded because any further increasing leads to decrease in drag reduction.

In addition, a correlation equation was found to correlate wall shear stress as a function of bulk mean fluid velocity.

This correlation equation is of value in scale up of results obtained in small laboratory equipment's to larger diameter pipes and different operating conditions.

Another objective was to investigate the mechanism behind a possible drag reduction.