Numerical Modeling of Multi-phase Flows through Valves

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SlurryFlo Valve Corp. is a 100% Canadian owned company working in the field of engineering andmanufacturing across Canada. SlurryFlo Valve Corp. designs custom-engineered control valves for variousflow conditions applied to a variety of industrial applications in the mineral processing, gas and petroleum, andpower generation sectors and many other fields. With increasing demand for new, more effective valves, thecompany engineering group has observed a need to perform more advanced computational research on severalcritical flow modeling scenarios involving large-scale control valves. One of the critical issues in designingnew large-scale valves (>30 inches) is an increase in the turbulence intensity of the flow passing through thevalve and the occurrence of phase separation or segregation due to downstream recirculation zones past thevalve. As a result, the turbulence and phase segregation significantly influence the so-called valve flowcoefficient, which plays the governing role in valve design and in the selection of materials used in valveproduction. In this view, an accurate prediction of the valve flow coefficient taking into account the impact ofturbulence is necessary for an optimal design of large scale valves. Calculations of this kind will help thecompany to make valves more reliable and more effective in terms of operation and production. In this workthe flow coefficient of valves will be calculated directly using three-dimensional computational fluid dynamicmodels (3D CFD) under different flow conditions.The innovative nature of this work lies in an adoptation of 3D CFD-based models (including a set ofsubmodels and numerical schemes) available in the commercial solver ANSYS-Fluent to predict the flowcoefficient of valves for single-phase and multiphase turbulent flows through valves of different sizes. Theexpected outcome from modeling single-phase and multi-phase flows through a valve will contributesignificantly to enhancing the reliability and efficiency of engineered valves in a variety of industrialapplications in mineral processing, gas and petroleum and many other fields across Canada.