Polyacrylic acid (PAA) is a water-soluble polymer that is well suited for studying molecular influences on polymer drag reduction behavior since its polymer chain conformation and size in water are extremely sensitive to solution conditions. Effects of PAA molecular weight and solution factors such as pH and water quality were investigated. Solution pH is the most important factor governing conformation of polyelectrolytes such as PAA; a higher pH (leading to size expansion) gives a polymer drag reduction. As is known, molecular weight is an intrinsic factor in polymer drag reduction. Another critical factor for PAA drag reduction is water quality, since mineral ions present in water can induce collapse of the polymer molecules and subsequently, the drag reduction becomes null. However, in mineral-free water (obtained by either demineralization or chemical treatment), PAA drag reduction is remarkable.(jes).
A large amount of studies have been carried out on pipeline flow with several kinds of drag reducing agents, especially polymers and surfactants. Drag reducing agents, by definition, are additives which help suppress or eliminate turbulence in a pipeline. The mechanism and methodology of polymer only or surfactant only as drag reducing additives have been fully discovered. Whether mixed drag reducers such as polymer-surfactant or polymer-polymer systems would be effective is still not clear. In our study, polymer-surfactant and polymer-polymer mixed additives are used in order to explore the synergistic effects and interactions in pipeline flow loops. The experimental work was divided into two sections: bench-scale experiments and pilot-scale experiments. In bench-scale experiments, the properties of prepared fluids such as, surface tension, conductivity and shear viscosity were measured. Several comparison methods and calculations were applied to give better understandings of the properties resulting from mixing of polymer with surfactant and polymer with polymer. After analysis of the properties, several combinations of concentrations were selected and solutions were prepared in the main tank of pilot plant and pumped into the pipeline set-up to test the pipeline flow behaviors. Turbulence structure/Reynolds number, pipe diameter, polymer-surfactant concentration were all considered as influencing factors. Critical micelle concentration, critical aggregation concentration, polymer saturation point, the onset of drag reduction, and the interactions between the mixed additives were discussed. A comparison between pipeline results and the predictions of Blasius Equation or Dodge-Metzner Equation were also discussed.. For polymer-surfactant studies, a commonly used polymer additive - carboxylmethylcellulose (referred to as CMC which is anionic) was selected as the drag reducing agent. The performance of this polymer was investigated in the presence of six surfactants respectively - Alcohol ethoxylate (referred to as Alfonic 1412-9 and Alfonic 1412-3 which are nonionic), Aromox DMC (nonionic surfactant), Stepanol WA-100 and Stepwet DF-95 (which mainly consist sodium lauryl sulfates, anionic surfactant) and Amphosol (which is zwitterionic).The experiments were first conducted with pure CMC solution with different concentrations (100ppm, 500ppm, 700ppm and 1000ppm) as a standard. The 500ppm CMC solution was selected as the best polymer concentration with highest drag reduction efficiency. For polymer-surfactant combinations, CMC-Alfonic 1412-9, CMC-Alfonic1412-3, CMC-Stepanol and CMC-Stepwet systems were found to have significant interactions. High surfactant concentration resulted in reduction in %DR. The addition of Aromox increased the drag reduction ability and onset point when concentration was higher than the polymer saturation points. Also, both hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions were thought to have an effect on critical micelle concentration, which led to the fluctuations in the %DR. For polymer-polymer studies, PAM-PEO system at two different polymer concentrations were investigated. Overall, Pure PAM solution had much higher drag reduction ability than pure PEO solutions. Mixing them together, strong interactions occurred when PEO fraction was high (over 50%) which affected %DR and shear viscosity substantially. Power-law constants n and k were also taken into account and found to exhibit opposite trends with the increase of PEO fraction.
Special attention is paid to the changes in turbulence structure brought about by polymer additives, and an effort is made to understand these in the light of recent advances in the study of shear flow turbulence in ordinary fluids. Also a simplified theoretical model of shear flow wall turbulence is presented, with the aid of which an exploratory study of the influence of some non-Newtonian fluid properties is carried out. A particularly intriguing feature is the remarkable effectiveness of extremely high-molecular-weight polymers by which only a few parts per million of weight of solvent are sufficient in some cases to lead to drag reductions of 50 per cent or more. (Modified author abstract).
A saturated drag-reduction line for dilute polymer solutions is derived for a rotating disk from new velocity-similarity laws. Drag reduction measured by a rotating disk is found to have three domains--oversaturated, optimal and undersaturated. At a given boundary-layer thickness and wall-shear stress, the drag-reduction increases with increasing concentration in the undersaturated domain, and the drag reduction does not increase with increasing concentration in the oversaturated domain. The boundary between the two domains is the optimal drag reduction, which is determined by the type of polymer and its concentration and a Reynolds number based on shear velocity and disk radius or boundary-layer thickness. (Author).
Drag Reduction of Complex Mixtures discusses the concept of drag reduction phenomena in complex mixtures in internal and external flows that are shown experimentally by dividing flow patterns into three categories. The book is intended to support further experiments or analysis in drag reduction. As accurately modeling flow behavior with drag reduction is always complex, and since drag reducing additives or solid particles are mixed in fluids, this book covers these complex phenomena in a concise, but comprehensive manner. Comprehensively addresses a range of drag reduction themes involving different kinds of complex mixtures Provides data to support further experimentation and computer modeling of drag in complex flow Includes an introduction to the nature and characteristics of different kinds of complex mixtures
The object of this thesis was to investigate the drag reduction phenomenon in turbulent flow caused by random coiling macromolecules in 'dilute' solution. In particular, this thesis was concerned with the relationship of drag (or its reduction) to the size of the coils and their concentration, of two kinds of polymers differing significantly in chain flexibility: polyethylene oxide (PEO), the more flexible, and polyisobutylene (PIB), the less flexible. It was found that, within any given homologous polymer series, the ability of macromolecules to reduce drag improved drastically with increasing molecular weight. That is, the concentration of polymers in solution either in the absolute weight fraction or in the effective volume fraction required to yield a given percent drag reduction decreased rapidly with increasing molecular weight. It was further found that there always existed an optimum concentration for any given polymer system at which the observed drag reduction reached a maximum.
