Engineering Postgraduate Conference (EPC) 2008 INVESTIGATING THE BEHAVIOR OF COPPER POWDER AS DRAG REDUCING AGENT IN AQUEOUS MEDIA Emma Suali, Hayder A.Abdul Bari and Zulkafli Hassan Faculty of Chemical and Natural Resources Engineering, University Malaysia Pahang, Malaysia. ABSTRACT The behavior of copper fiber suspensions as drag reducing agent (DRA) in horizontal PVC pipe was experimentally investigated. An experimental rig with three different pipe diameters (0.0127 m, 0.0254 m and 0.0381 m) was built in order to investigate the performance of copper fiber suspensions as drag reducing agent. The variables investigations are concentration, Re and the ratio of pipe diameter to pipe length (L/D). In 39.37 of L/D the most effective concentration of copper for drag reduction to occur is less than 700 ppm. For fiber concentration of 50 ppm, the difference of drag reduction is low even though operated at high differences of Re. It is also found that in 39.37 of L/D, the drag reduction increases as the concentration increase and same phenomena goes to 26.24 of L/D and 13.12 of L/D. The maximum drag reduction was achieved is 80% for 550ppm concentration of solution operated at 8000 of Re. Keywords: Drag Reduction; Fiber Suspension; Copper; Pipe; Turbulent Flow INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE SURVEY Power saving is the major headline in all the researches concerned drag reduction. During the past century, the issue of drag reduction becomes one of the most interesting topics because of its capability to save the pumping power due to transportation work in pipelines, channel, offshore, sewerage, cooling and heating device (Myska and Mik, 2003). In addition, the concepts of drag reduction allow the pipelines to be operated at a lower pressure, reducing energy costs and more production with less energy consumption (ConocoPhilips, Sustainable Developments Reports, 2006).Polymers, surfactants and later on “suspended solids” are the major DRA used in the literatures. Many researchers through their experimental work have proved the capability of these DRA. Suksamranchit et al.(2005) discovered that the maximum drag reduction of nonionic polymer additive, poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) can be achieved up to 85% while conducting an experiment of DRA effect on turbulent wall shear stress in Couette cell. Kawaguchi et al. (2002) conducted experiments on cationic surfactant cetyltrimethyl ammonium chloride (C 16 H 33 N (CH 3 )3Cl) mixed with the same weight of counterion material NaSal (HOC 6 H 4 COONa) in a two dimensional