An experimental investigation for water flow enhancement in horizontal pipes by using nanoparticles

Abstract EN

This work has been devoted to investigate experimentally, the increase in range of horizontal discharge distance and velocity of water flow for pipes of fire-hoses and water jet propulsion systems in small ships.

The enhancement method of water flow depends on increase the drag reduction and best uniform flow.

One of the important practice techniques is adding a small amount of some materials, cheap and locally available added into water flow in a horizontal pipe.

A simple experimental system is designed and constructed to investigate the increase in drag reduction.

Nanoparticles (aluminum oxide – 30 nm diameters) and polyacrylamide (PAM) have been added alone and gain time together.

Experimental calculations of average flow velocity, Reynolds number, and friction factor and percentage drag reduction are experimentally calculated under water heads of 75,100, 125,150,175 and 200 cm.

The effects of concentration ratios of nanofluid (AL2O3) on friction factor and drag reduction are studied and calculated.

The present results showed that addition of AL2O3 and PAM are caused reducing in friction factor, increase in range of horizontal discharge distance and the velocity of water flow.

Also the results indicated that, drag reduction was 26% increased at addition of AL2O3 and 39% at PAM while at mixing them together was 52 % as average for six heads were chosen.

The results are represented graphically to explain the degrees of enhancement of increasing in drag reduction, flow velocity and the range of discharge distance for water in horizontal pipes.

The originality of this work was addition materials of nanopartcles with polyacrylamide together.