An Experimental Characterization of Horizontal Gas-Liquid Slug Flow

The present work is meant to broaden the knowledge on the fluid mechanics of the two-phase slug flows in horizontal pipes by means of an experimental approach. To accomplish this goal, an experimental facility at the LACIT-UTFPR labs consisting of a 25.8 mm ID, 9-m long transparent pipeline was used. A pair of 12×12-node wire-mesh sensors based on electrical capacitance was used to identify the void fraction in each node of the mesh. Bubble velocities, unit cell frequencies, void fractions and the characteristic lengths of this kind of flow were then obtained after a proper signal processing of the experimental data. To verify the measurements, a methodology to evaluate every measurement done in this work was proposed. Due to the intermittent nature of those flows, their characteristic parameters were identified as probability distributions, and approximated by probability density functions (PDF) such as the normal or log-normal ones. Correlations depending upon the inlet superficial velocities of both liquid and gas phases were fitted for the average values and standard deviation of each parameter. Finally, those correlations were compared to the experimental data, with the aim of accurately predicting the aforementioned parameters as functions of the inlet flow variables, so that those parameters can be used in the development of theoretical models for horizontal gas-liquid slug flow.