Elbows are widely used in various industrial fields and are important for industrial applications. In this study, Eulerian coupling method was used to address the fluid-particle, and particle-particle interactions in a gas-solid two-phase flow while considering the effects of lifting angle, airflow velocity, and solid mass flow rate. The Hertz-Mindlin contact model and empirical Erosion/Corrosion Research Center erosion model were used to predict erosion in a lifting elbow, and the erosion ratio was used for validation with the experimental results. Experimental results indicated that the established model herein is accurate with different airflow velocities and lifting angles. The orthogonal design method was applied to the simulation scheme design, and range and variance analyses were used for the analysis of the results. Results indicated that the solid mass flow rate most affected elbow erosion comparing with lifting angles and airflow velocities. Additionally, the effect of the elbow lifting angle on the erosion mechanism was considered, and results indicated that the maximum erosion region is independent of the airflow velocity, lifting angle, and solid mass flow rate.

This study investigates the motion and fragmentation of non-spherical particles in pipeline pneumatic conveying, using gangue particles as the research object. The effects of airflow velocity and particle shape on the picking characteristics, as well as the influence of elbow angle, airflow velocity, particle size, and air pressure on particle crushing, were analyzed through a combination of Computational Fluid Dynamics and Discrete Element Method (CFD-DEM) coupled simulations and experiments. Orthogonal experiments were conducted to determine the optimal combination of parameters for minimizing particle breakage rates and pipeline pressure drops. The results show that the airflow velocity significantly affects the pick-up rate of particles, while particle shape also plays a key role, with higher sphericity resulting in lower pick-up rates. Among the factors influencing particle breakage, airflow velocity has the most pronounced effect, followed by elbow angle and particle size, whereas air pressure has a relatively minor impact. In terms of the pressure drop inside the pipeline, all factors—airflow velocity, elbow angle, particle size, and air pressure—exert considerable influence, with air pressure being the most critical factor. The optimal configuration for minimizing both particle breakage and pressure drop was determined to be an elbow angle of 150°, particle size ranging from 7 to 11 mm, airflow velocity of 20 m/s, and air pressure of 0.4 MPa.

In order to solve the problem of uneven air inlet flow in the guide channel of autoclave, three optimization schemes for the guide plate were proposed. The flow field in the guide channels of autoclave was simulated and analyzed by the realizable k-epsilon turbulence model and dynamic boundary method. The results show that the three optimization schemes have a certain effect on solving the problem of uneven air inlet flow in each guide channel, but some of them also have some negative effects. The integration of the three optimization schemes effectively increases the total air inlet flow of the guide channels; the increase ratio reaches 4.15%, improves the flow-field characteristics at the outlet of the guide channels and greatly reduces the difference in the air inlet flow in the left and right guide channels; the difference ratio drops from 62.61% to 5.37%.

In this paper, the Computational Fluid Dynamics–Discrete Element Method (CFD-DEM) coupling method was used to simulate the pneumatic transport of pebble particles in a three-blade spiral tube. The results showed that the flow field distribution rotated along the circumference after loading. The maximum velocity of the flow field after loading was manifested as rotation along the circumference. In addition, the swirl intensity decreased exponentially with the increase in conveying distance, and the maximum swirl intensity had a saturation value. After reaching the saturation value, it is not evident that increasing the initial air velocity significantly affected swirl variation. The smaller the pitch, the greater the initial swirl intensity. The swirling flow was conducive to the fluidization of particles, but it would bring a significant energy loss. Increasing the swirl can increase the degree of particle dispersion. There is an optimal tangential airflow velocity, which allows the particles to fully spin and stay in the suspension zone without being thrown onto the pipe wall by excessive centrifugal force. At this time, the energy efficiency reaches the highest level. A 5.87 m/s velocity was deemed the optimal tangential airflow velocity for conveying 3 mm particles.