The oil / water two-phase flow inside T-junctions was numerically simulated with a 3-D two-fluid model, and the turbulence was described using the mixture k- ε model. Some experiments of oil / water flow inside a single T-junction were conducted in the laboratory. The results show that the separating performance of T-junction largely depends on the inlet volumetric fraction and flow patterns. A reasonable agreement is reached between the numerical simulation and the experiments for both the oil fraction distribution and the separation efficiency.
WANG Li-yang WU Ying-xiang ZHENG Zhi-chu GUO Jun ZHANG Jun TANG Chi
In this article, principle and mathematical method of determining the phase fractions of multiphase flows by using a dual-energy γ -ray system have been described. The dual-energy γ -ray device is composed of radioactive isotopes of 241Am and 137Cs with γ -ray energies of 59.5 and 662 keV, respectively. A rational method to calibrate the absorption coefficient was introduced in detail. The modified arithmetic is beneficial to removing the extra Compton scattering from the measured value. The result shows that the dual-energy γ -ray technique can be used in three-phase flow with average accuracy greater than 95%, which enables us to determine phase fractions almost independent of the flow regime. Improvement has been achieved on measurement accuracy of phase fractions.
The measurement of void fraction is of importance to the oil industry and chemical industry. In this article, the principle and mathematical method of determining the void fraction of horizontal gas-liquid flow by using a sin- gle-energy γ-ray system is described. The γ-ray source is the radioactive isotope of 241Am with γ-ray energy of 59.5 keV. The time-averaged value of the void fraction in a 50.0-mm i.d. transparent horizontal pipeline is measured under various combinations of the liquid flow and gas flow. It is found that increasing the gas flow rate at a fixed liquid flow rate would increase the void fraction. Test data are compared with the predictions of the correlations and a good agreement is found. The result shows that the designed γ-ray system can be used for measuring the void fraction in a horizontal gas-liquid two-phase flow with high accuracy.