Experimental Analysis of a Two Phase Air-Water Flow in a Tube of Small Size Diameter Under Various Inlet Conditions

Author(s):  
S. Zeguai ◽  
S. Chikh ◽  
O. Rahli ◽  
L. Tadrist

An experimental apparatus is setup to analyze a two phase air-water upward flow in a vertical tube with an inner diameter of 3 mm. Air is axially injected through a microduct of 260 μm inner diameter. Various inlet conditions for air pressure and water flow rate are tested covering a wide range of superficial velocities JL = 0.221 to 0.312 m/s and JG = 0.061 to 0.083 m/s for a given position of air injection (x = 8cm). A fast camera with 250 fps is used to visualize different flow regimes. Experiments showed that the flow type is very sensitive to inlet conditions and several flow regimes were observed namely: the bubbly flow, the slug flow and the annular flow.

Author(s):  
S. Zeguai ◽  
S. Chikh ◽  
O. Rahli ◽  
L. Tadrist

An experimental apparatus is setup to analyze a co-current air-water two phase flow in a 3 mm inner diameter tube with horizontal and vertical orientations. Air is axially injected through a nozzle of 260 μm of inner diameter. Air and water flow rates are accurately controlled at the inlet, covering a range of apparent velocities JL = 0.00118 to 0.0786 m/s, JG = 0.002 to 3.538 m/s for the horizontal tube and JL = 0.00078 to 0.0589 m/s, JG = 0.003 to 3.538 m/s for the upward flow. A fast camera with 250 fps is utilized to visualize the flow patterns. The experiments showed that the flow structures are very sensitive to inlet conditions. Within the covered range of velocities, several flow patterns were observed, namely bubbly flow, bubbly-slug transition flow, slug flow, slug-annular transition flow, annular flow, wavy annular flow and annular flow with dry zones. In the bubbly flow regime, a particular bubbly helical flow is observed before the dispersed bubbly flow.


Author(s):  
Afshin Goharzadeh ◽  
Keegan Fernandes

This paper presents an experimental investigation on a modified airlift pump. Experiments were undertaken as a function of air-water flow rate for two submergence ratios (ε=0.58 and 0.74), and two different riser geometries (i) straight pipe with a constant inner diameter of 19 mm and (ii) enlarged pipe with a sudden expanded diameter of 19 to 32 mm. These transparent vertical pipes, of 1 m length, were submerged in a transparent rectangular tank (0.45×0.45×1.1 m3). The compressed air was injected into the vertical pipe to lift the water from the reservoir. The flow map regime is established for both configurations and compared with previous studies. The two phase air-water flow structure at the expansion region is experimentally characterized. Pipeline geometry is found to have a significant influence on the output water flow rate. Using high speed photography and electrical conductivity probes, new flow regimes, such as “slug to churn” and “annular to churn” flow, are observed and their influence on the output water flow rate and efficiency are discussed. These experimental results provide fundamental insights into the physics of modified airlift pump.


Author(s):  
Lv Yufeng ◽  
Zhao Minfu ◽  
Li Weiqing

Mechanical non-homogeneous and thermal non-equilibrium phenomenon exists in two-phase critical flow compared with single phase flow. A one-dimensional two-fluid critical flow model is developed for initially subcooled water flowing in pipe or orifices. The model accounts for thermal nonequilibrium between the liquid and vapor bubbles and for interphase relative motion. In this model, an improved correlation to calculate flashing inception location and surperheat is proposed. The model consists of six conservation equations as well as a seventh equation representing bubble growth in bubbly flow. Closure of the set of governing equations is performed with constitutive relationships which determine the interfacial momentum terms due to mass exchange, wall to liquid and wall to vapour frictional forces, liquid to gas interfacial force and interfacial heat transfer rate. The model considers the development of three flow regimes, namely, bubbly, churn and annular flow regimes. Model predictions compare favorably with experimental data over a wide range of pressures and pipe diameters and lengths.


Author(s):  
Koichi Hata ◽  
Toshiyuki Sato ◽  
Takeya Tanimoto ◽  
Masahiro Shiotsu ◽  
Nobuaki Noda

The critical heat fluxes (CHFs) of subcooled water flow boiling are systematically measured for the flow velocities (u = 4.0 to 13.3 m/s), the outlet subcoolings (ΔTsub,out = 3 to 129 K) and the outlet pressure (Pout = 800 kPa). The SUS304 test tubes of 3, 6, 9 and 12 mm in inner-diameter, d, and 33, 66, 99 and 133 mm in length, L, respectively for L/d = 11 are used. The CHFs first become lower and then become higher with the increase in subcooling. The CHFs for four different inner-diameters with L/d = 11 measured here become higher with the decrease in the diameter. CHF correlation for the latter increasing regime was given in non-dimensional form against average outlet subcoolings based on the experimental data. The correlation can describe not only the CHFs obtained in this work at the outlet pressure of 800 kPa but also the authors’ published CHFs (1284 points) for the wide range of Pout = 159 kPa to 1 MPa, d = 6, 9 and 12 mm, L = 49, 99 and 149 mm, ΔTsub,out = −4 to 130 K and u = 4.0 to 13.3 m/s within 15% difference for 50 K≤ΔTsub,out≤130 K and within +30 to −10% for 30 K<ΔTsub,out<50 K.


2004 ◽  
Vol 126 (3) ◽  
pp. 312-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koichi Hata ◽  
Masahiro Shiotsu ◽  
Nobuaki Noda

The critical heat fluxes (CHFs) of subcooled water flow boiling are systematically measured for the flow velocities (u=4.0 to 13.3 m/s), the outlet subcoolings (ΔTsub,out=3 to 129 K) and the outlet pressure Pout=800kPa. The SUS304 test tubes of 3, 6, 9 and 12 mm in inner-diameter, d, and 33, 66, 99 and 133 mm in length, L, respectively for L/d=11 are used. The CHFs first become lower and then become higher with the increase in subcooling. The CHFs for four different inner-diameters with L/d=11 measured here become higher with the decrease in the diameter. CHF correlation for the latter increasing regime was given in non-dimensional form against average outlet subcoolings based on the experimental data. The correlation can describe not only the CHFs obtained in this work at the outlet pressure of 800 kPa but also the authors’ published CHFs (1284 points) for the wide range of Pout=159kPa to 1 MPa, d=6, 9 and 12 mm, L=49, 99 and 149 mm, ΔTsub,out=−4 to 140 K and u=4.0 to 13.3 m/s within 15% difference for 50K⩽ΔTsub,out⩽140K and within −10 to +30% for 30K<ΔTsub,out<50K.


2004 ◽  
Vol 126 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ranganathan Kumar ◽  
Charles C. Maneri ◽  
T. Darton Strayer

An analysis capability to examine the two-phase bubbly flow in high pressure boiling systems has been developed. The models have been adapted from the literature for a narrow high aspect ratio geometry using the measurements obtained in a companion paper. Three-dimensional computational results have been compared with cross-section averaged and line-averaged void fractions measured with a gamma densitometer, and local void fraction measured with a hot-film anemometer. These comparisons have been made over a wide range of flow inlet conditions, wall heating and system pressure. Comparisons are found to be good when the flow is bubbly, but at high void fractions, where the flow is churn-turbulent or annular, the two-field modeling approach does not perform adequately. This result emphasizes the need for multiple field modeling.


Author(s):  
Naoki Matsushita ◽  
Akinori Furukawa ◽  
Kusuo Okuma ◽  
Satoshi Watanabe

A tandem arrangement of double rotating cascades and single diffuser cascade, proposed as a centrifugal pump with high performance in air-water two-phase flow condition, yields lower head due to the smallness of the impeller outlet in comparison with a impeller with large outlet diameter and no diffuser. Influences of impeller diameter change and installation of diffuser blades on two-phase flow performance were experimentally investigated under the case of the same volute casing. As the result, the similarity law of the diameter of impeller having the similar blade geometry and the rotational speed is satisfied even in two-phase flow condition. Comparing pump performances between a large impeller without diffuser blades and a small one with diffuser blades, higher two-phase flow performance is obtained by controlling the rotational speed of a small impeller with diffuser blades in the range of small water flow rates, while a large impeller with no diffuser gives high performance in the range of high water flow rate and small air flow rate.


2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 608
Author(s):  
Jie Yi ◽  
Huilin Xing ◽  
Tianwei Sun ◽  
Victor Rudolph

The production of coal seam gas initially requires pumping and removing significant amounts of water to sufficiently reduce the hydrostatic pressure in the subsurface, so that methane can desorb from the matrix and diffuse into the cleat systems; majority of the methane molecules gather into nucleation or bubbles. During the depression, the flow pattern of gas in cleats changes from bubble flow to slug flow, and finally forms circular flow. The significance of the bubble flow process—during which the liquid phase is continuous while the gas phase exists as small bubbles randomly distributed within the liquid—has not been emphasised because of its complexity. In this study, a free energy based two-phase lattice Boltzmann model is used to simulate the gas bubble/water flow behaviour in micro-cleats of a coal seam gas reservoir. The model was validated by comparison with analytical results based on dimensionless numbers, and good agreement was found in general. The influences of bubble shape, bubble size, and coal surface wettability on gas water two-phase flow in micro-cleats are discussed. The simulation results indicate that the bubble size and wettability of gas have significant impacts on the flow capacity of both gas and water. A decrease of the water flow rate is observed when large bubbles occur, and the gas flow rate decreases when the gas wettability becomes stronger. The bubble flow process significantly influences the drainage of water and the further gas production.


2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Renato P. Coutinho ◽  
Paulo J. Waltrich ◽  
Wesley C. Williams ◽  
Parviz Mehdizadeh ◽  
Stuart Scott ◽  
...  

Abstract Liquid-assisted gas-lift (LAGL) is a recently developed concept to unload wells using a gas–liquid fluid mixture. The success deployment of the LAGL technology is related to the behavior of two-phase flow through gas-lift valves. For this reason, this work presents an experimental and numerical study on two-phase flow through orifice gas-lift valves used in liquid-assisted gas-lift unloading. To the knowledge of the authors, there is no investigation in the literature on experimental characterization of two-phase flow through gas-lift valves. Experimental data are presented for methane-water flow through gas-lift valves with different orifice port sizes: 12.7 and 17.5 mm. The experiments were performed for pressures ranging from 1.00 to 9.00 MPa, gas flow rates from 0 to 4.71 m3/h, and water flow rate from 0 to 0.68 m3/min. The experimental results are compared to numerical models published in the literature for two-phase flow through restrictions and to commercial multiphase flow simulators. It is observed that some models developed for two-phase flow through restrictions could successfully characterize two-phase flow thorough gas-lift valves with errors lower than 10%. However, it is first necessary to experimentally determine the discharge coefficient (CD) for each gas-lift valve. The commercial flow simulators showed a similar performance as the models available in the literature.


Author(s):  
D. A. Kamble ◽  
B. S. Gawali

Micro-convection is a strategic area in transport phenomena, since it is the basis for a wide range of miniaturized high-performance heat transfer applications. Surface area is one of the important parameter for high flux heat transfer in microchannel performance. This experimental study deals with heat transfer using triangular microchannel having hydraulic diameters of 321μm and 289μm. Experimentation is carried out for triangular microchannel set for different heat input and flow rate condition. Triangular microchannel are manufactured with EDM technology. Testing of microchannel under laminar flow is considered with different tip angle, spacing, and length of microchannels. The different microchannels made up of copper material with 29 microchannel each having three different sets of length of 50 mm, 70 mm and 90 mm respectively. Tip angles for triangular microchannel is varied 50 ° and 60 ° with width of 30 mm each respectively are analyzed numerically. Spacing between triangular microchannels is also varied and 300μm and 400μm are considered for the analysis. Water flow rate is considered laminar flow. The flow rate of water is varied from 0.0167 kg/sec to 0.167 kg/sce to carry away heat. It is observed that as hydraulic diameters increase the heat transfer coefficient decreases. As the heat input to microchannel increases from 10 Watt to 100 Watt the temperature drop across varies from 2° C to 22°C as water flow rate increases. The numerical analysis is done using computer C programming. Experimental result differ from theoretical for temperature drop with variation of 2°C to 5°C. It is also observed that in all triangular microchannels its geometry i.e. tip angle and hydraulic diameter are dominant parameters which influences on rate of heat transfer. With increasing channel depth, increases flow passage area therefore enhances heat transfer sufficiently. From experimentation a Nu number correlation is proposed with considering tip angle, length, spacing of microchannel and other related parameters.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document