Study of the fluidity of coal-water slurry by multi-scale hybrid particle dynamics simulations
YU Shi
LI Xiao
CHU Ruizhi
WU Guoguang
MENG Xianliang
MIAO Zhenyong
Abstract：The coal particles' size distribution largely affects the fluidity and stability of coal-water slurry(CWS).To overcome the scale problem due to the wide coal particle size distribu-tion,coal particles were divided into two categories based on whether the Brownian motions of the particles were negligible.Small particles("diffusion dominated")were simulated by SRD-MD coupled method,while large particles("sedimentation dominated")were simulated by Stokesian dynamics.Our SRD-MD simulation results(e.g.,the effects of the particles volume fraction on the apparent viscosities)of bi-dispersed spherical particles agree with previous ex-perimental results of glass particles suspension.And the application of the SRD-MD simulation technique to the"three peak fractal grading coal water slurry"demonstrates that SRD-MD sim-ulation in combination with previous experimental results of glass particles suspension(appar-ent viscosity versus volume fraction of solid particles)can predict the viscosity of that specific CWS with small error.And our Stokesian dynamics simulation results of large particles reveal the dynamical structure of particles during sedimentation in gravity field,which also shows that the sedimentation of CWS for industry time scale can be simulated by Stokesian dynamics with limited computational cost.Therefore,this hybrid simulations framework can bridge the gap between micro-structures of coal particles and macro-scale properties of coal-water slurry.
Keywords：coal water slurryfluiditymulti-scale simulationsparticle dynamics
Publication Date：2025-05-30
Online Publishing Date：2025-08-15(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：13( 698-710 )