Preparation and improving stability of bubble petroleum coke water slurry

To improve the stability of petroleum coke water slurry (PCWS), bubble-PCWS has been researched in this paper. The presence of bubbles in the slurry helps to decrease its apparent viscosity and enhance its slurryability. The three-dimensional network structures based on the bubble–particle complexes make the bubble-PCWS show pseudoplastic characteristics. Effects of the operational parameters such as aeration time, frother dosage, aperture size of air distribution plate and solid concentration of the slurry on its stability were investigated. The results showed that the stability of the bubble-PCWS increased as aeration time increased moderately and as the solid concentration decreased. Stability increased rapidly at first and then gradually decreased when increasing the frother dosage, and that the stability remained practically unchanged as the aperture size of air distribution plate varied within the experimental range. With aeration time of 30 min, frother dosage of 0.03 wt% and solid concentration of 65 wt%, the bubble-PCWS could achieve an increase of about 80 percentage points in pour rate over PCWS without bubbles under the same conditions.