Numerical Evaluation of Pressure Drop Across Orifices for Different Gas-Liquid Mixtures

Author(s):  
Zurwa Khan ◽  
Reza Tafreshi ◽  
Matthew Franchek ◽  
Karolos Grigoriadis

Modeling two-phase flow across orifices is critical in optimizing orifice design and fluid’s operation in countless architectures and machineries. While flow across different orifice geometries has been extensively studied for air-water flow, simulations and experiments on other two-phase flow combinations are limited. Since every fluid mixture has its own physical properties, such as densities, viscosities and surface tensions, the effect of these properties on the local pressure drops across the orifices may differ. This study aims to investigate the effect of different fluid combinations on the pressure drop across sharp-edged orifices with varying gas mass fractions, orifice thicknesses, and area ratios. A numerical model was developed and validated using experimental data for air-water flow. Then, the model was extended to include various gas-liquid flows including gasoil, argon-diesel and fuel oil. The local pressure drops were then estimated and compared with the existing empirical correlations. The developed model presents a unified approach to measure pressure drop across orifices for different fluid mixtures with different geometries and gas-liquid compositions, unlike existing empirical correlations which are applicable for specific orifice geometries. The results showed that Morris correlation, Simpson correlation, and Chisholm correlation are more appropriate for gasoil, argon-diesel and fuel oil mixtures, respectively. They also yielded that for all fluid combinations, increasing orifice thickness and area ratio led to a decrease in local pressure drop, while increasing gas mass fraction led to an increase in local pressure drop. This revealed that, despite having similar responses to changes in orifice geometries and gas fractions, unlike the assumption made by previous works on air-water flow, no empirical correlation is able to predict pressure drops for all flow mixtures, while the presented numerical model can efficiently determine the local pressure drop for all combinations of flow mixtures, orifice geometries and gas mass fractions.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zurwa Khan ◽  
Reza Tafreshi ◽  
Matthew Franchek ◽  
Karolos Grigoriadis

Abstract Pressure drop estimation across orifices for two-phase liquid-gas flow is essential to size valves and pipelines and decrease the probability of unsafe consequences or high costs in petroleum, chemical, and nuclear industries. While numerically modeling flow across orifices is a complex task, it can assess the effect of numerous orifice designs and operation parameters. In this paper, two-phase flow across orifices has been numerically modeled to investigate the effect of different fluid combinations and orifice geometries on pressure drop. The orifice is assumed to be located in a pipe with fully-developed upstream and downstream flow. Two liquid-gas fluid combinations, namely water-air, and gasoil liquid-gas mixture were investigated for different orifice to pipe area ratios ranging from 0.01 to 1 for the superficial velocity of 10 m/s. Volume of Fluid multiphase flow model along with k-epsilon turbulence model were used to estimate the pressure distribution of liquid-gas mixture along the pipe. The numerical model was validated for water-air with mean relative error less than 10.5%. As expected, a decrease in orifice to pipe area ratio resulted in larger pressure drops due to an increase in the contraction coefficients of the orifice assembly. It was also found that water-air had larger pressure drops relative to gasoil mixture due to larger vortex formation downstream of orifices. In parallel, a mechanistic model to directly estimate the local two-phase pressure drop across orifices was developed. The gas void fraction was predicted using a correlation by Woldesemayat and Ghajar, and applied to separated two-phase flow undergoing contraction and expansion due to an orifice. The model results were validated for different orifices and velocities, with the overall relative error of less than 40%, which is acceptable due to the uncertainties associated with measuring experimental pressure drop. Comparison of the developed numerical and mechanistic model showed that the numerical model is able to achieve a higher accuracy, while the mechanistic model requires minimal computation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 103 (3) ◽  
pp. 003685042094088
Author(s):  
Yi Ma ◽  
Minjia Zhang ◽  
Huashuai Luo

A numerical and experimental study was carried out to investigate the two-phase flow fields of the typical three valves used in the multiphase pumps. Under the gas volume fraction conditions in the range of 0%–100%, the three-dimensional steady and dynamic two-phase flow characteristics, pressure drops, and their multipliers of the ball valve, cone valve, and disk valve were studied, respectively, using Eulerian–Eulerian approach and dynamic grid technique in ANSYS FLUENT. In addition, a valve test system was built to verify the simulated results by the particle image velocimetry and pressure test. The flow coefficient CQ (about 0.989) of the disk valve is greater than those of the other valves (about 0.864) under the steady flow with a high Reynolds number. The two-phase pressure drops of the three valves fluctuate in different forms with the vibration of the cores during the dynamic opening. The two-phase multipliers of the fully opened ball valve are consistent with the predicted values of the Morris model, while those of the cone valve and disk valve had the smallest differences with the predicted values of the Chisholm model. Through the comprehensive analysis of the flow performance, pressure drop, and dynamic stability of the three pump valves, the disk valve is found to be more suitable for the multiphase pumps due to its smaller axial space, resistance loss, and better flow capacity.


2011 ◽  
Vol 308-310 ◽  
pp. 553-558
Author(s):  
Chun Hui Fang ◽  
Xiao Yue Zhang

For seepage in unsaturated soil, there are both air flow and water flow, which can be called the water-air two-phase flow. In order to simulate the water-air two-phase flow in soil when there is groundwater, a numerical model of water-air two-phase flow in saturated-unsaturated soil is established in this paper. By the model, the air-flow and water-flow in unsaturated soil are both considered in seepage calculation. And the mass transfer between air-phase and water-phase, change of phase states are considered in calculation. Capillary pressure is the most important factor for the water-air two-phase flow in unsaturated soil, and the calculation method of capillary pressure is also given in the paper. At last examples are given to verify the correctness of the numerical model and the calculation method.


Author(s):  
Chaoxing Yan ◽  
Changqi Yan ◽  
Licheng Sun ◽  
Yang Wang

Experimental study on resistance of air-water two-phase flow in a vertical 3 × 3 rod bundle was carried out under normal temperature and pressure. The rod diameter and pitch were 8 mm and 11 mm, respectively. The ranges of gas and liquid superficial velocity were 0.013∼3.763 m/s and 0.076∼1.792 m/s, respectively. The result indicated that the existing correlations for calculating frictional coefficient in the rod bundle and local resistance coefficient could not give favorable predictions on the single-phase experimental data. For the case of two-phase flow, eight correlations for calculating two-phase equivalent viscosity poorly predicted the frictional pressure drop, with the mean absolute errors around 60%. Meanwhile, the eight classical two-phase viscosity formulae were evaluated against the local pressure drop at spacer grid. It is shown that Dukler model predicted the experimental data well in the range of Rel<9000 while McAdams correlation was the best for Rel⩾9000. For all the experimental data, Dukler model provided the best prediction with MRE of 29.03%. Furthermore, approaches to calculate two-phase frictional pressure drop and local resistance were proposed by considering mass quality, two-phase Reynolds number and densities in homogenous flow model, resulting in a good agreement with the experimental data.


2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 115 ◽  
Author(s):  
N.Z Aung ◽  
T Yuwono

Nine existing mixture viscosity models were tested for predicting a two-phase pressure drop for oil-water flow and refrigerant (R.134a) flow. The predicted data calculated by using these mixture viscosity models were compared with experimental data. Predicted data from using one group of mixture viscosity models had a good agreement with the experimental data for oil-water two-phase flow. Another group of viscosity models was preferable for gas-liquid flow, but these models gave underestimated values with an error of about 50%. A new and more reliable mixture viscosity model was proposed for use in the prediction of pressure drop in gas-liquid two-phase flow.


Author(s):  
Mehaboob Basha ◽  
S. M. Shaahid ◽  
M. Mudasar Imam ◽  
Aftab Ahmad ◽  
Luai M. Al-Hadhrami

Air-water two-phase flow in a pipeline often occurs in petroleum industry. It is important to study behavior of such flows in order to characterize two-phase flow in upstream production pipelines. This paper presents pressure drop measurements of air-water two-phase flow in a horizontal and inclined 4 inch diameter stainless steel pipe at different flow conditions. Experiments were carried out for different inclination angles including; 0°, 15°, 30° (upward and downward flows) and for different water-to-air volume fractions. Inlet superficial water velocities were varied from 0.3 to 3 m/s and reference pressure was set at 1 and 2 bars. For a given superficial air velocity, pressure drop has been found to increase with increase in superficial water velocity. Pressure drop was also affected by the inclination of pipe. Upward flows were associated with high pressure drops as compared to downward flows. Measured pressure drops were compared with existing empirical relations and good agreement was found.


Author(s):  
Hiroyasu Ohtake ◽  
Hideyasu Ohtaki ◽  
Yasuo Koizumi

The frictional pressure drops and two-phase flow patterns of gas-liquid two-phase flow in mini-micro pipes and at vena contract and expansion were investigated experimentally. Test liquid was water; test gas was argon. The diameter of the test mini-pipe was 0.5, 0.25 and 0.12 mm, respectively. The pressure drop data and the flow pattern were collected over 2.1 < Ug < 92.5 m/s for the superficial gas velocity and 0.03 < Ul < 10 m/s for the superficial liquid velocity. The experimental results show that the flow patterns were slug, churn, ring and annular flows; pure bubbly flow pattern was not observed in a range of the present experimental conditions. The two-phase friction multiplier data for D > 0.5 mm showed to be in good agreement with the conventional correlations. On the other hand, the two-phase friction multiplier data for D < 0.25 mm differed from the calculated values by the conventional correlations. Then, thickness of liquid film around a gas plug and size of gas core were estimated and the effect of frictional pressure drop on channel size was discussed through Knudsen Number of gas and instability on liquid-gas interface. The coefficients of sudden enlargement and sudden contraction in mini-pipes for the gas-water two-phase flow were modified from the present experimental results.


Author(s):  
Dae W. Kim ◽  
Emil Rahim ◽  
Avram Bar-Cohen ◽  
Bongtae Han

The thermofluid characteristics of a chip-scale microgap cooler, including single-phase flow of water and FC-72 and flow boiling of FC-72, are explored. Heat transfer and pressure drop results for single phase water are used to validate a detailed numerical model and, together with the convective FC-72 data, establish a baseline for microgap cooler performance. Experimental results for single phase water and FC-72 flowing in 120 μm, 260 μm and 600 μm microgap coolers, 31mm wide by 34mm long, at velocities of 0.1 – 2 m/s are reported. “Pseudo-boiling” driven by dissolved gas and flow boiling of FC-72 are found to provide significant enhancement in heat transfer relative to theoretical single phase values.


Author(s):  
Mehdi Mortazavi ◽  
Kazuya Tajiri

Proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells produce power with water and heat as inevitable byproducts. Accumulated liquid water within gas channel blocks the reactant flow and cause pressure drop along the gas channel. It is of extreme importance to accurately predict the liquid and gas two-phase flow pressure drop in PEM fuel cell flow channels. This pressure drop can be considered as an in-situ diagnostic tool that reveals information about the amount of liquid water accumulated within the flow channels. In this paper, the two-phase flow pressure drops are measured in ex-situ PEM fuel cell parallel flow channels. The pressure drops were measured for air mass fluxes of 2.4–6.3kg/m2s and water mass fluxes of 0.0071–1.28kg/m2s. These mass fluxes correspond to 2–5.33m/s and 7.14 × 10−6 – 0.0012m/s air and water superficial velocities, respectively. The measured two-phase flow pressure drops are then compared with different two-phase flow pressure drop models. Qualitative and quantitative comparison between the experimental results and existing models is provided in this work.


2012 ◽  
Vol 134 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manmatha K. Roul ◽  
Sukanta K. Dash

Two-phase flow pressure drops through thin and thick orifices have been numerically investigated with air–water flows in horizontal pipes. Two-phase computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculations, using the Eulerian–Eulerian model have been employed to calculate the pressure drop through orifices. The operating conditions cover the gas and liquid superficial velocity ranges Vsg = 0.3–4 m/s and Vsl = 0.6–2 m/s, respectively. The local pressure drops have been obtained by means of extrapolation from the computed upstream and downstream linearized pressure profiles to the orifice section. Simulations for the single-phase flow of water have been carried out for local liquid Reynolds number (Re based on orifice diameter) ranging from 3 × 104 to 2 × 105 to obtain the discharge coefficient and the two-phase local multiplier, which when multiplied with the pressure drop of water (for same mass flow of water and two phase mixture) will reproduce the pressure drop for two phase flow through the orifice. The effect of orifice geometry on two-phase pressure losses has been considered by selecting two pipes of 60 mm and 40 mm inner diameter and eight different orifice plates (for each pipe) with two area ratios (σ = 0.73 and σ = 0.54) and four different thicknesses (s/d = 0.025–0.59). The results obtained from numerical simulations are validated against experimental data from the literature and are found to be in good agreement.


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