Performance of components of ice slurry systems: pumps, plate heat exchangers, and fittings

In recent years, a lot of important work has been carried out in order to gather knowledge of the fundamental behaviour of ice slurry in piping systems and heat exchangers. The scope of this work has been to bring ice slurry one step closer to practical application, i.e. to provide a basis for selecting distribution pumps and investigating flow in piping system components. rformance of different multiple-stage centrifugal pumps has been measured with ice concentrations in the range from 0 to 30 wt% of ice. It was found that the pump operation is reliable in the entire range of ice concentrations. The pump performance decreases with increasing ice concentration due to the increasing viscosity of the ice slurry. The viscosity model proposed by Hansen [Viscosity of ice slurry. Second IIR Workshop, Paris, France (2000)] has been applied to compare the manufacturer data on the viscosity dependency. From the results, it cannot be concluded whether the pump performance is entirely determined by the increasing viscosity or whether the solid particles have an additional effect. ow behaviour of ice slurry has been investigated in a test rig with transparent pipes to allow visual observation of flow patterns in various single components such as fittings, valves and heat exchangers. Finally, pressure loss coefficients in selected fittings have been measured to reveal the dependency of ice concentration.