Experimental study on the rheological behaviour of coal ash slurries

Extensive experimental investigations were carried out to evaluate the rheological behaviour of fly ash (FA) slurry without and with the addition of bottom ash (BA) and BA slurry without and with the addition of FA. The FA slurries exhibited Bingham behaviour at solid mass concentrations ranging from 60–65% and mixing proportions from 10– 40%. A substantial reduction in yield stress was observed except for mixing proportion of 40% on which the yield stress and viscosity were increased drastically for all solid concentrations. Hence, it can be concluded that the yield stress and viscosity of FA slurry were very much influenced by adding BA up to the mixing proportion of 30%. The rheological behaviour of BA slurries with and without the addition of FA in proportions of 10–50% was investigated and exhibited Newtonian behaviours for solid mass concentrations ranging from 30–50% without and with the addition of FA. The viscosity increases with increasing the solid concentrations and proportion of FA. Based on these experimental data, a correlation was developed to predict the relative viscosity of BA slurries as a function of solid volume fraction and FA mass proportion of 0–50% and the RMSE and R² values showed good agreement between the experimental and the predicted data.