Structural analysis and performance optimization on new powder liquid mixer

Key words:  powder liquid mixer  annular jet  dynamic mixing  numerical simulation  experiment  structure optimization

Abstract:

The main problems existing in powder liquid mixers are that:Firstly, the intake of guanidine powders is insufficient, which affects the viscosity of the mixture. Secondly, in the mixing process, the production of solidified powders affects the quality of the fracturing fluid. Combined with the annular jet principle, a new powder liquid mixer is designed and the related experimental equipment is built. Its main structure includes the conveying duct of base fluid, suction pipe of powders, mixer tube of powder-liquid and mixer etc. A powder-liquid mixer model is built for numerical simulations, and the orthogonal experiment is performed. Finally,the structure of the mixer is optimized. The simulation results show that the negative pressure generated by the fluid flowing through the acceleration zone is about 0.087 4 MPa, and the solid and liquid phases can be mixed evenly. Moreover, the negative pressure value produced by the optimized structure is up to 0.072 8 MPa, and it can reach 83.3% of the theoretical value. Also, there are no solidified powders in the fracturing fluid. All parameters of the fracturing fluid can satisfy the requirements, and the mixer can achieve a good dynamic mixing effect.