One of the concerns expressed by the External Flowsheet Review Team (EFRT) is about the potential for pipe plugging at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP). Per the review’s executive summary, “Piping that transports slurries will plug unless it is properly designed to minimize this risk. This design approach has not been followed consistently, which will lead to frequent shutdowns due to line plugging.” To evaluate the potential for plugging, deposition-velocity tests were performed on several physical simulants to determine whether the design approach is conservative. Deposition velocity is defined as the velocity below which particles begin to deposit to form a moving bed of particles on the bottom of a straight horizontal pipe during slurry-transport operations. The deposition velocity depends on the system geometry and the physical properties of the particles and fluid. An experimental program was implemented to test the stability-map concepts presented in WTP-RPT-175 Rev. 01. Two types of simulant were tested. The first type of simulant was similar to the glass-bead simulants discussed in WTP-RPT-175 Rev. 0 ; it consists of glass beads with a nominal particle size of 150 µm in a kaolin/water slurry. The initial simulant was prepared at a target yield stress of approximately 30 Pa. The yield stress was then reduced, stepwise, via dilution or rheological modifiers, ultimately to a level of
Revised: October 27, 2010 |
Published: July 1, 2009