Solids transport in oil and gas pipeline is organized under the Terminology of ‘‘flow assurance.’’ Although many industrial challenges are encountered concerning solids problems, they received little interest to date in the literature; this is especially true for solids transport in viscose fluid.
The complex flow behavior of sand is based on interaction between sand particles and carrier fluid; the interaction depends on different parameters, particle size is one of those parameters. Understanding the effects of these parameters on slurry viscosity is important to develop the slurry treating processes and predict slurry viscosity.
This study presented a visual observation of the entrained velocity which requires initiating the movement of solid particles (bed) into the low viscous fluid (water). The tests were carried out by observing the movement of the bed particles in the transparent horizontal pipe while the water velocity changed from low to high value. The definition of the entrained velocity is the change of the sand bed status from stationary sand bed to moving sand bed. The carrier fluid was water; the entrained velocities of the sand bed with different particles concentrations were measured as well as pressure gradient.
The results showed that entrained velocity increases as the sand grain size decreases and higher sand concentration.