Analysis of the Possibilities of Energy Recovery from Gravity Flows in Pipelines in a Copper Ore Enrichment Plant

Abstract

Considering the need to reduce climate change and energy costs, the possibilities of energy recovery have been sought for many years, even if this should involve significant complexity of the technological process. Attempts to recover energy from a flowing medium containing a large amount of a solid phase are rather rare. This is mainly due to unfavorable erosion and sludge phenomena. The aim of this work is to analyze the possibility of recovering energy from gravity flows in the pipelines of a copper ore enrichment plant. The analysis will be carried out for a system operating in a plant in Poland. An energy recovery device will be designed taking into account the flow of a two-phase medium. For this purpose, flow calculations will be performed. The calculation results obtained for the two-phase flow will be verified based on the experimental results presented in the literature. The simulations will make it possible to determine the power of the designed device.