Process measurement – Discover Dredging

CEDA Dredging Days 2021: Sustainable Dredging And Innovation

Promotional banner of the CEDA Dredging Days 2021 (Credit: CEDA)

Tomorrow, another event with a long tradition will start: the CEDA Dredging Days1. Due to the Covid issues, this time, it will be a virtual event, just as a lot of other regular happenings. Hopefully, it will be the last days of this dreadful period. I can’t wait to meet people again in real life. Back at the office, we are slowly starting to get back. But meetings with people far outside the regular circle were difficult. For instance, I was a member of the Technical Paper & Program Committee and the preparation was completely digital.

Home page of your CEDA Dredging Days on the Swapcard platform (Credit: CEDA)

Now, the event itself is also digital. Of course, this is still not the real thing. Having a coffee and a chat in the lobby is a much more enjoyable experience than sitting in front of your screen. I have to say that with the Sawpcard platform2 selected by the organising committee, it is much easier to arrange your own program, adapted to your personal interests. Moreover, it will also facilitate meeting people with the same interest. In a sense, this might be an opportunity to approach those. In the real world, people will not get seated next to you when they have the same interest. And certainly don’t have them captioned on their chest.

Pump design workflow (inspired by Suman Sapkota)

As member of the TPPC, I had the opportunity of a sneak preview of the articles and presentations and I can guarantee there are a lot of interesting sessions. For starters, there are three presentations by my colleagues. Suman Sapkota will have presentation on his research in various novel methods to apply numerical research into the design of dredge pumps3. We are happy to share with you some experiences and insights on the Dredging Days.

Testing the non-radioactive density sensor

Another presentation will be by Frank Bosman4. He has been active in the development of an instrument that will measure the mixture density, without using a radio-active source. This intelligent solution is not only more sustainable, but will also provide easier access to this information. If you don’t know the density, you are very likely to underperform with your dredge. He will present some experiences and data gathered on the performance of this system.

Example of recent electric DOP dredge family

Our last presentation will be by René Sens3. Less technical, but surely an interesting perspective on the future of dredging equipment. Everyone in the dredging community is aware of the necessity to change and adapt to a more sustainable approach of our dredging business. There is an urgency to reach the goals set by the UN to leave the world behind as a better place than we received it. Although usually an increase in size also increases the efficiency of a dredge, the UN goals look beyond that single parameter. With that in mind, small and medium size dredges will be far more interesting than at first sight.

Session 7: Young CEDA ask a CEO (Credit: CEDA)

There will be a lot more going on and I could produce a long list of other interesting presentations. I think you should also check out: Edwin de Hoog and Joep Goeree, Basel Yousef and Jeroen van Stappen, and if you really want to get academic: Janek Gundlach, Ebi Shahmirzadi and Arno Talmon. You can just add to your own list and see who also joins in in the audience. Other interesting sessions will be the student ‘Flash Talks’5 and the ‘Young CEDA ask a CEO’ session6 with Peter Berdovski and Kees van de Graaf. And I am very curious what the other working groups and commissions of CEDA have to present about their work.

Thursday evening is the big get together of the dredging community; meet you there! (Credit: CEDA) — Dredging Days as a they used to be: personal interaction (Credit: CEDA)

References

Student Interviews On Their Projects With Our Dredge Pump Slurry Test Circuit In Damen Nieuws

Damen dredge pump slurry test circuit on the outfitting quay in Nijkerk

‘What sets men apart from boys is the size of their toys.’ And that wisdom applies to a lot of students that we’ve had at our company and have grown from boy to man working on our dredge pump slurry test circuit for their internship or graduation. As the test circuit has seen some intense activity these last months and yielded us with some very innovative concepts and possible new products, it was the right time to cover this interesting piece of equipment in the internal Damen Nieuws1 of January 2021 to share with all our colleagues. And that occasion in turn is an excellent opportunity to share with you the article and zoom into some of the details of the circuit.

General arrangement of the dredge pump slurry test circuit

Already more than ten years ago, we felt the need to have our own testing facility to experiment with the processes in our dredges or check the performance of new products2. After defining the specifications of the circuit, we had Hylke Visscher assisting us in designing the circuit for his internship. Subsequently he could actually supervise the manufacturing of the circuit for his graduation. Hylke worked in close cooperation with Arjan de Vries who in turn did his graduation on the building, outfitting and commissioning of the circuit. Both students from then are now esteemed and valuable colleagues as we have appreciated their performance on their projects.

After those ten years, we have a new generation of students working on the circuit. Arend van Roon recently graduated on his project with the circuit, as covered in my last post3. Currently Wim Kleermaker is preparing his experiments on the dredge pump. Upcoming is Williem Salim, not yet mentioned in the article, but now already starting his internship on the instrumentation of our laboratory. All project on the test circuit are supervised by Pieter van der Kooi as plant manager, Frank Bosman as student coordinator. Depending on the project, Ewout van Duursen, Suman Sapkota and me are supervising the student projects more on a subject level.

Various executions of a U-bend c-meter in the test circuit, for delivery and installed on a dredge

The odd thing you might notice in the loop of the test circuit is the U-bend directly after the dredge pump. Contrary to most first impressions, it is not to generate resistance, although it does so slightly. It is to measure how much sand has been transported. As the circuit is by nature closed, there is no way to check how much we’ve transported through the dredge pump. Sure, there is a density sensor4, but this will only indicate the so called volumetric density; how much material is there in the cross section. It will not differentiate between fast moving slurry and a slow sliding bed. In the extreme you could have a static bed, indicating a very high concentration. Multiplying this with a very high fluid speed, that is squeezed through the remaining aperture, you would expect an impressive production. Wrong! Not a single particle gets transported.

Enter: the U-bend. It measures the hydrostatic pressure differences over a certain hight in the upstream and downstream branches. This will cancel out the velocity differences but will yield the actual transported mass flow. So, that is how we can claim that we already dredged millions of cubic meters, all on the floor area of a 40 foot container flatbed.

Explanation of the U-bend measuring principle

References

Graduation of Arend van Roon: Detecting Flow Regime And Optimising Transport Efficiency

Arend van Roon defending his graduation thesis

Our first happy event this year is the graduation of Arend van Roon. He recently graduated on a project in the slurry test circuit at our Research and Development department at Damen Dredging Equipment1. His research was an interesting investigation in the detection of flow regimes. It gives some insight in the processes involved in the transport of water-solids mixtures. Let me share some details from the background with you, as I think this might be helpful for your own operation also.

Overview of the Damen Dredging Equipment slurry pumping test circuit

At first sight, it is hard to imagine, how something heavier than water, the grains, can be lifted when the fluid is moving. Sape Miedema has written the standard on mixture transport in his book ‘Slurry Transport’, explaining his approach with the ‘Delft Head Loss & Limit Deposit Velocity Framework2’. Without going into the academic details, I will try to help you grasp the gist of the phenomena.

DHLLDV book (Credit: Sape Miedema) — Slurry Transport text book cover (Credit: Sape Miedema)

First the grains have to be picked up. When they are lying on the bottom of the pipe, they are fully immersed, surrounded by the fluid on all sides. The free fluid on top and the pore water between the grains under and on the side of the grains. Now comes Bernoulli’s trick. When the fluid in the pipe starts moving, he says that the local dynamic pressure decreases, while the static fluid in the pores remains at the same pressure. The pressure difference between the pressure in the pores and in the moving fluid, pushes the grains out of the bed into the fluid.

Grain pickup and suspension process explained

Once the particles are in the fluid are in the fluid, they should stay suspended, or they fall back into the bed. The driving force here is the turbulence in the fluid. Usually dredging slurry mixtures are turbulent. This turbulence causes the fluid to flow in eddies. These are little vortices that generally move in the direction of the flow, but in a moving frame of reference tumble in all directions. Mmh, as they rotate in all directions, why don’t they cancel each other out? Now, imagine being a particle yourself, surfing on those eddies. When it is in a fluid, it tends to sink with a certain settling velocity. Independent of the local movement of the fluid. This means, that on the downward side of the eddy, the particle has a higher total velocity than on the upward side. As the eddy is sort of symmetric, the particle dwells longer in the upward draft than on the downward fall. In this infinitesimal time difference, the eddy transfers some extra kinetic energy from the fluid to the potential energy of the particle. As this loss of kinetic energy is compensated by an increase in pressure (remember Bernoulli) carrying grains in a fluid increases the pressure loss in the slurry transport.

Flow regimes and excess hydraulic gradient requirements in dredging slurry transport (Credit: Sape Miedema)

This turbulence is in short the background of suspension in the slurry transport process. Depending on al the various governing parameters: densities, viscosity, diameters, velocities etc, the equilibrium of forces result in several different regimes in the slurry flow. Ranging from homogeneous, through stratified to ultimately a static bed. Each with their own particular pressure losses. And that is what we are interested in. On our dredges, we want to transport as much material to the least amount of energy3. We are constantly looking for improvements in our equipment and sensors to assist the operator in visualising and controlling the actual state of his process4. Thanks to Arend’s project and the promising results, we can set the next step in our product development.

Explanation on slurry flow conditions, critical speed and specific power consumption

Tag: Process measurement

CEDA Dredging Days 2021: Sustainable Dredging And Innovation

References

See also

Student Interviews On Their Projects With Our Dredge Pump Slurry Test Circuit In Damen Nieuws

References

See also

Graduation of Arend van Roon: Detecting Flow Regime And Optimising Transport Efficiency

References

See also