A Review of Wet Gas Flow Rate Measurements by Means of Single-Phase Meters

Nowadays, wet gas flow rate measurement is still a challenge for experimental investigators and it is becoming an even more important issue to overcome in the turbomachinery sector as well, due to the increasing trend of wet compression applications in industry. The requirement to determine gas turbine performance when processing a wet gas leads to the need to understand certain phenomena, such as type of liquid flow re-distribution, and errors introduced when the mass flow rate measurement of a two-phase gas is attempted. Unfortunately, this measurement is often affected by the presence of liquid. Literature does not offer a unique definition of the term wet gas, although it is recognized that a wet gas can generally be defined as a two-phase gas in which the liquid percentage is lower than the gas one. This paper aims to collect and describe the main works present in literature in order to clarify i) the most used parameters that describe the types of wet gas, and ii) the types of errors and flow patterns which occur in different types of applications, in terms of pressure, percentage of liquid, Reynolds number, etc. Therefore, this literature review offers a comprehensive description of the possible effects of liquid presence in a wet gas and, and an in-depth analysis of the limitations and beneficial effects of current single-phase flow rate sensors in order to identify the best solutions, and empirical corrections available in literature to overcome this challenge.