[curiouscat]

Say you are pumping a slurry. Say, salt crystals in water. Perhaps 10% of the slurry is solids.

Now choking / plugging is always something you want to avoid. My naive intuition says use a large pipe size to avoid choking.

OTOH, for a certain flowrate a smaller pipe means a larger velocity. So that would be less likely to plug up.

What's the right way to think about this?

[discodermolide]

Perhaps a turbulent flow is the way to go here, keep the stuff in suspension. So higher velocity and perhaps a nitrogen blast to maintain turbulence?

[Arkcon]

Bulk flow is more of a chemical engineering question, we'll see how our experts weigh in.  My knee jerk reaction is that you'll want a wider pipe.  Flow is essentially zero at the inner surface for liquids, I have to guess the same or worse for a slurry.  So you want a wider tube so there is flow.  Unless the slurry is a non-Newtonian fluid.  But in that case, I have no idea at all.

[curiouscat]

Bulk flow is more of a chemical engineering question, we'll see how our experts weigh in.  My knee jerk reaction is that you'll want a wider pipe.  Flow is essentially zero at the inner surface for liquids, I have to guess the same or worse for a slurry.  So you want a wider tube so there is flow.  Unless the slurry is a non-Newtonian fluid.  But in that case, I have no idea at all.

It shouldn't be non Newtonian. What I worry most is solids settling out. It is a settling slurry. Make a pipe too large and essentially you have a settling problem.

[Corribus]

Knowing virtually nothing at all about this subject, I can still add that this might be a situation where there is be a tradeoff between the two factors and the optimum situation is somewhere in the middle.

[DrCMS]

I know a company that pumps ~1m³ per minute of a 65% solids slurry through an 11inch underground pipe for an uninterrupted 56miles.  The replacement cost from the last time they blocked it 10-15years ago was over £1M per mile. 

[curiouscat]

I know a company that pumps ~1m³ per minute of a 65% solids slurry through an 11inch underground pipe for an uninterrupted 56miles.  The replacement cost from the last time they blocked it 10-15years ago was over £1M per mile.

Thank my stars that my slurry is 5 to 10% my distance is a 100 ft or so.

[discodermolide]

I thought you had to transport it further!
Only 100 feet! You should not have a problem. Make sure its all downhill.