Lowering mechanical degradation of drag reducers in turbulent flow
Witold Brostow a), Haley E. Hagg
Lobland a), Taruna Reddy b), Ram P. Singh c),
Leslie White a)
a) Laboratory of Advanced Polymers &
Optimized Materials (LAPOM), Department of Materials
Science and Engineering, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas 76203-5310
b) Materials Science Centre, Indian Institute of Technology,
Kharagpur 721 302, India
c) Office of the Vice Chancellor, University of Lucknow, Lucknow 226
007, India
ABSTRACT
Drag reduction
(DR) agents are used in several ppm concentrations to accelerate
significantly the flow through conduits in oil pipelines, oil well operations,
flood water
disposal, fire fighting, field irrigation, transport of suspensions and
slurries, sewage
systems, water heating and cooling systems, airplane tank filling, marine
systems, and
also in biomedical systems including blood flow. The drag reduction agents are
typically high molecular mass polymers; in industrial applications they undergo
mechanical degradation in turbulent flow. We provide an equation that describes
quantitatively the degradation, thus predicting drag reduction as a function of
time and
of the concentration of the drag reduction agent. We report how grafting a
polymer on
the backbone of a different polymer affects the drag reduction efficacy. Our
grafted
polymer undergoes degradation by flow turbulence more slowly and also provides
high
levels of drag reduction efficacy at much lower concentrations than homopolymers
do.
Maintained by Oscar Olea-Mejia