Drag Reduction of a Pipe Flow Using Nata de Coco Suspensions

Satoshi Ogata, Gunawan, Jun Warashina, Yanuar

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The addition of drag-reducing agents to reduce pipe friction loss has attracted attention as a method to conserve energy. In addition to reducing drag, these agents are required to have a low environmental load and conserve natural resources. Therefore, naturally occurring biopolymer additives, which are considered to have a low environmental load, have recently received much attention. Here we focused on nata de coco, a type of biopolymer that exhibits low mechanical degradation, and found that it reduced drag by up to 25% at a concentration of 50 ppm. With respect to the drag reduction (DR) mechanism, we investigated the relation between DR phenomena and the fiber structure of nata de coco by visualization. As a result, we found that the DR effect appeared only when a network of nata de coco fibers was formed in the suspension. In addition, DR increased as the size of the network of nata de coco fibers increased.

Original languageEnglish
Article number651260
JournalAdvances in Mechanical Engineering
Volume2014
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014

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