An Experimental Investigation for Water Flow Enhancement in Horizontal Pipes by Using Nanoparticles

Abstract

This work has been devoted to investigate experimentally, the increase in range of horizontaldischarge distance and velocity of water flow for pipes of fire-hoses and water jet propulsionsystems in small ships. The enhancement method of water flow depends on increase the dragreduction and best uniform flow. One of the important practice techniques is adding a smallamount of some materials, cheap and locally available added into water flow in a horizontalpipe. A simple experimental system is designed and constructed to investigate the increase indrag reduction. Nanoparticles (aluminum oxide – 30 nm diameters) and polyacrylamide (PAM)have been added alone and gain time together. Experimental calculations of average flowvelocity, Reynolds number, and friction factor and percentage drag reduction areexperimentally calculated under water heads of 75,100, 125,150,175 and 200 cm. The effectsof concentration ratios of nanofluid (AL2O3) on friction factor and drag reduction are studiedand calculated. The present results showed that addition of AL2O3 and PAM are causedreducing in friction factor, increase in range of horizontal discharge distance and the velocityof water flow. Also the results indicated that, drag reduction was 26% increased at addition ofAL2O3 and 39% at PAM while at mixing them together was 52 % as average for six headswere chosen. The results are represented graphically to explain the degrees of enhancement ofincreasing in drag reduction, flow velocity and the range of discharge distance for water inhorizontal pipes. The originality of this work was addition materials of nanopartcles withpolyacrylamide together.