Vol-3 Issue-1 2017 IJARIIE-ISSN(O)-2395-4396

A Review of flow regime transition and

pressure drop in two phase flow for vertical pipe
Sethi Upasna Vijay1, Mansha Kumari2

1
Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, Vadodara Institute of Engineering College,
Kotambi,Gujarat,India
2
Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, Vadodara Institute of Engineering College,
Kotambi,Gujarat,India

ABSTRACT
In this study, the flow patterns of air–water, two-phase flows have been investigated in a vertical mini pipe.
Different flow patterns of air–water flow were observed simultaneously in the mini pipe at different values of air and
water flow rates. Pressure drop prediction is investigated for vertical pipe in two phase flow. Pressure drop is
causing more damage to vertical pipes as it has been many applications.

Keyword: regimes, Surfactant: a substance which tends to reduce the surface tension of a liquid in which it is
dissolved.

1. FLOW PATTERN TRANSITIONS IN VERTICAL FLOW

The regimes encountered in vertical flows are illustrated in Figure 1. They include Bubble Flow, where the liquid is
continuous, and there is a dispersion of bubbles within the liquid; Slug or Plug Flow where the bubbles have
coalesced to make larger bubbles which approach the diameter of the tube; Churn Flow where the slug flow bubbles
have broken down to give oscillating churn regime; Flow where the liquid flows on the wall of the tube as a film
(with some liquid entrained in the core) and the gas flows in the center; and Wispy Annular Flow where, as the
liquid flow rate is increased, the concentration of drops in the gas core increases, leading to the formation of large
lumps or streaks (wisps) of liquid.

Fig: Types of Vertical Flow Regimes

1.1 Pressure Drop
Pressure losses occur in two-phase flow systems due to friction, acceleration and gravitational effects. If a fixed flow
is required, then the pressure drop determines the power input of the pumping system. Here, examples are the design

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of pumps for the pipeline transport of slurries, or for pumping of oil-water mixtures. If the available pressure drop is
fixed, the relationship between velocity and pressure drop needs to be invoked in order to predict the flow rate.
There are two types of pressure drop prediction i.e. homogeneous model and separated flow model.
In the homogeneous model, the two phases are assumed to be travelling at the same velocity in the channel and the
flow is treated as being analogous to a single phase flow.
In Separated flow models, the two fluids are considered to be travelling at different velocities and overall
conservation equations are written taking this into account

1.2 Application of vertical flow regime transition

Historically, probably the most commonly studied cases of two-phase flow are in large-scale power systems. Coal
and gas-fired power stations used very large boilers to produce steam for use in turbines. In such cases, pressurized
water is passed through heated pipes and it changes to steam as it moves through the pipe. The design of boilers
requires a detailed understanding of two-phase flow heat-transfer and pressure drop behavior, which is significantly
different from the single-phase case. Even more critically, nuclear reactors use water to remove heat from the reactor
core using two-phase flow. A great deal of study has been performed on the nature of two-phase flow in such cases,
so that engineers can design against possible failures in pipework, loss of pressure, and so on (a loss-of-coolant
accident (LOCA)
Another case where two-phase flow can occur is in pump cavitation. Here a pump is operating close to the vapor
pressure of the fluid being pumped. If pressure drops further, which can happen locally near the vanes for the pump,
for example, then a phase change can occur and gas will be present in the pump. Similar effects can also occur on
marine propellers; wherever it occurs, it is a serious problem for designers. When the vapor bubble collapses, it can
produce very large pressure spikes, which over time will cause damage on the propeller or turbine.
The above two-phase flow cases are for a single fluid occurring by itself as two different phases, such as steam and
water. The term 'two-phase flow' is also applied to mixtures of different fluids having different phases, such as air
and water, or oil and natural gas. Sometimes even three-phase flow is considered, such as in oil and gas pipelines
where there might be a significant fraction of solids.
Other interesting areas where two-phase flow is studied includes in climate systems such as clouds, and
in groundwater flow, in which the movement of water and air through the soil is studied.
Other examples of two-phase flow include bubbles, rain, waves on the sea, foam, fountains, mousse, cryogenics,
and oil slicks.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

Safa Sharaf,G. Petervander Meulen, Ezekiel O. Agunlejika Barry J. Azzopardi paper presents detailed
experimental data obtain educing a Wire Mesh Sensor. It shows that the most obvious features of the flow are huge
waves travelling on the liquid film. Wisps, large tendrils of liquid and the product of in complete atomization,
which had previously detected in smaller diameter pipes, have also been found in the larger diameter pipe employed
here. The output of the Wire Mesh Sensor has been used to determine the overall void fraction.

P. Hanafizadeh, M.H. Saidi ∗, A. Nouri Gheimasi, S. Ghanbarzadeh has discussed about air–water, two-phase
flow patterns were investigated experimentally for mini pipes with diameters of 2, 3 and 4 mm. An image
processing technique was used for detection of flow patterns from pictures derived from films recorded with a high
speed camcorder. The obtained flow patterns reveal that there is no noticeable difference between two-phase,
upward flow patterns in this range of diameters. A new flow pattern map was achieved for vertical mini pipes, due
to a comparison of the flow patterns of these three diameters of pipe. The proposed map was compared with existing
research. A comparison of the present work and previous research shows that the flow patterns of slug, messy slug
and semi-annular in the present work are compatible with the intermittent flow pattern of Ide et al. However, in the
present study, the annular flow is seen at a lower

Zhou, Jing had discussed the influence of a surfactant on two-phase upward vertical flow regime was investigated
in this study. With the addition of surfactant, the churn regime was extended towards lower gas velocity, and no
bubble flow was observed at lower gas/liquid velocity for the range of conditions studied. The bubble sizes in all

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flow regimes were changed due to the lower surface tension caused by addition of the surfactant solution. The
comparison between this experimental studies with several predictive models was provided.

Garaev Damir had presented the experiments in vertical air/water two phase up flow were performed using a riser
of 127 mm in diameter at different pressure to change the density of the gas. Data on void fraction were gained
using a Wire Mesh Sensor (WMS). The data were analyzed to obtain flow patterns, frequency etc. Using these data
comparison with different prediction methods was carried out.

Shanthi C, Pappa N, Aswini Suganya J has an approach for identifying the flow pattern using Neural Network and
Support vector machine is developed. Flow images are captured using high speed SLR camera and are preprocessed.
After preprocessing the images, the textural features such as entropy, homogeneity, contrast, correlation and energy
are extracted. The textural features extracted are given as the input to the neural network and support vector
machine. Four typical flow regimes such as bubbly flow, slug flow, stratified flow and annular flow are captured
from the experimental set-up. The results obtained shows that support vector machine method of classification is
very effective with accuracy of 98.03 percent and hence higher recognition is done.

Maqbool Muhammad Hamayun, Björn Palm, Khodabandeh R., Ali Rashid deals with experiments performed
to study the behavior of the two phase flow pressure drop of ammonia , in a vertical mini channel made of stainless
steel having an internal diameter of 1.224 mm and a heating length of 245 mm. The test conditions are: mass fluxes
from 200 to 500 kg/m2s, heat fluxes from 20 to 340 kW/m2 and saturation temperatures of 23oC, 33oC and 43oC. The
experimental results are compared to well-known correlations for frictional pressure drop in macro and micro scale
channels.

Biria, Saeid aim to develop a better approach for predicting pressure gradient in vertical multiphase flow with and
without use of Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) as a surfactant and to develop a program for the prediction of pressure
drop by using Microsoft Visual Basic in Excel. Data was collected from four fixed liquid superficial velocity at
different ranges of gas superficial velocity in a 0.052m i.d. and 10m long, clear PVC pipe. Results indicate that the
addition of SDS resulted in reducing surface tension between phases from 72 to 64 mN/m, decreasing pressure drop
by approximately 26% and also Hasan and Kabir model for Air/DI water and Hagedorn and Brown model in the
presence of SDS in the mixture is the best model and leads to a reasonably accurate pressure gradient according to
measured pressure drop.

3. CONCLUSION

For flow regime transition in vertical pipes P. Hanafizadeh, M.H. Saidi ∗, A. Nouri Gheimasi, S. Ghanbarzadeh has
proposed Experimental investigation of air–water, two-phase flow regimes in vertical mini pipe.

For pressure drop prediction in vertical pipes Maqbool Muhammad Hamayun, Björn Palm, Khodabandeh R., Ali
Rashid has proposed experimental investigation of two phase pressure drop in a vertical mini-channel at three
saturation pressures.

4. REFERENCES
[1]. SafaSharaf, G. Petervander Meulen, Ezekiel O. Agunlejika, Barry J. Azzopardi, “Structures in gas–liquid
churn flow in a large diameter vertical pipe.” International Journal of Multiphase Flow 78 (2016) 88–103
[2]. P. Hanafizadeh, M.H. Saidi ∗, A. Nouri Gheimasi, S. Ghanbarzadeh,”Experimental investigation of air–
water, two-phase flow regimes in vertical mini pipe.” Scientia Iranica Transactions B: Mechanical
Engineering Scientia Iranica B (2011) 18 (4), 923–929
[3]. Flow patterns in vertical air/water flow with and without surfactant by Zhou, Jing
[4]. Multiphase flow in large diameter pipes by Garaev Damir MSc

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[5]. Shanthi C, Pappa N, Aswini Suganya J “Digital Image Processing Based Flow Regime Identification of
Gas/Liquid Two - Phase Flow” 10th IFAC International Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process
Systems The International Federation of Automatic Control December 18-20, 2013. Mumbai, India
[6]. Maqbool Muhammad Hamayun, Björn Palm, Khodabandeh R., Ali Rashid “experimental investigation of
two phase pressure drop in a vertical mini-channel at three saturation pressures” Proceedings of the 2nd
European Conference on Microfluidics - Microfluidics 2010 - Toulouse, December 8-10, 2010
[7]. Biria, Saeid University of Dayton Advisor: Dr. Robert J. Wilkens “prediction of pressure drop in vertical
air/water flow in the presence/absence of sodium dodecyl sulfate as a surfactant”
[8]. http://thermopedia.com/content/2/
[9]. http://thermopedia.com/content/3/

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