Separation of fine particulate matter from complex slurry mixtures is a challenge for mineral and hydrocarbon extraction, environmental cleanup, and drilling engineering.
A dedicated and fully equipped experimental rig was utilized at the University of Alberta, Edmonton to observe and correlate the frequency and magnitude of coherent turbulent flow structures and to quantify the selective radial transport (grading) of particles from the moving bed onto the main turbulent flow.
A preferential removal of coarser particles (from a bed containing fractions from 0.1–100 μm of glass beads).controlled by bursts-sweep near-wall activity, is observed and results are satisfactorily compared with a dedicated mechanistic model discussed in this paper.
Experimental and numerical results presented demonstrate the salient effect of near-wall interface burst activity driven by turbulent flow on the selective removal-deposition transport of fines during bed transportation of slurries.
