Airlift pumps, fluid machines for raising liquids or slurries through a vertical pipe by compressed air injected into the pipe near its mid position or lower end part, are widely used in the fields of deep seawater upwelling and seabed mining due to the advantages of simple structure, high reliability, convenient maintenance and low cost.
Therefore, many experimental studies have been conducted to clarify the air-water-solid three-phase flow characteristics of airlift pumps. Numerical and analytical studies have also been carried out to predict the performance of airlift pumps.
Rim Un Ryong, a researcher at the Faculty of Shipbuilding and Ocean Engineering, has carried out a numerical analysis of steady air–water–solid three-phase flow as well as water–solid two-phase flow in the airlift pump, based on a one-dimensional multi-fluid model.
He calculated the depth distributions of 8 physical quantities such as volumetric fractions and axial velocities of all phases of gas, liquid and solid, air density and pressure by the governing equations or by integrating the vector form of nonhomogeneous ordinary differential equations for three-phase and two-phase flow intervals, respectively.
He applied the proposed method to the seabed mining in water depth of 2 000 meters and obtained the calculation results.
For further information, please refer to his paper “Numerical analysis of air–water–solid three-phase flow in airlift pump for seabed mining” in “Ocean Engineering” (SCI).
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