CHAPTER 14 GAS-LIQUID FLOW In preceding chapters, as in most fluid mechanics problems, the flowing fluid was composed of one homogeneous phase, such as water, oil, air, or steam. However, many interesting and important flows involve the simultaneous flow of two quite different materials through the same conduit, such as the flow in a coffee percolator (Fig. 2.19), the flow in most vaporizers or boilers or condensers, and the flow in the carburetor of an automobile (Fig. 5.31). These flows can be of gas-liquid mixtures, liquid-liquid mixtures, gas-solid mixtures, or liquid-solid mixtures. Although there are industrially important examples of each of these combinations, the most important and interesting seems to be'the gas-liquid case, which we discuss in this chapter. Brief summaries of what is known about gas-solid and liquid-solid flows are given by Sakiadis [1]. In all these flows the influence of gravity is much greater than in the one-phase flows previously considered. For laminar or turbulent flow of water in a tube, the velocity distribution and friction effect (#) would be the same.on earth as in the zero-gravity environment of an earth ‘satellite. Neither the velocity distribution nor is influenced at all by changing the pipe’s position from horizontal to vertical. Gravity does not significantly influence the flow pattern or ¥, because it works equally on each particle of the fluid. This is not the case for two-phase flows, because normally’ the phases: have different densities and thus are affected to different extents by gravity. Not all the flows described in the following sections would be the same in a zero-gravity environment as on earth, and as shown in Secs. 14.1 and 14.2, horizontal and vertical two-phase flows have very different velocity distributions and ¥'s. 449450 FLUID MECHANICS FOR CHEMICAL ENGINEERS | 14.1 VERTICAL, UPWARD GAS-LIQUID FLOW Many of the salient features of multiphase flow can be illustrated by consider- ing the simultaneous gas-liquid flow up a vertical pipe with the apparatus sketched in Fig. 14.1, Assume that at first only water flows; then from Bernoulli’s equation Py ~ Pa = pg(z2— 24) + pF (14.1) For zero flow rate we can calculate P, — P, = pg Az 58.7 psi. = 60 kPa. As we start the flow rate of water only, P, — P, will increase, because of the increase in with increasing velocity. | Now let us hold the water flow rate constant at some modest average velocity, such as 2 ft/s, and slowly increase the air velocity from zero to some large value. This will cause ¥ to increase, since the overall linear velocity is increased. However, now there will be bubbles of gas in the pipe; the density in Eq. 14.1 is no longer the density of water but is the average density of the gas-liquid mixture in the vertical pipe. At low flow rates the density goes down much faster than ¥ goes up, so P, — P, decreases steadily as we increase the gas flow rate. Finally, a point is reached where fufther increase in the gas velocity causes % to increase faster than p decreases; P, ~ P, will increase with an increasing gas flow rate. A typical plot of expetimental data for such a | Figure 14.2 has the shape described above, with a a distinct kink in it near a flow rate ratio of 10. This is typical of such systems and indicates that the change described above does not take place smoothly. If the system is made of glass, so that the flow pattern can be observed, it will be seen that several distinctly different flow patterns are formed as the airflow rate is increased. Flowmeters: Conte vt ve pK Ot | FIGURE 14.1 | Apparatus for vertical, upward gas-liquid flow. | |Gas-LiouID FLOW 451 Lop 10, 03} pet 8 a Init pressure drop She) 08 6 ile -aP | 51 ae Cos | © Fictdup ratio g 0.4-— 2 — 4 8 a Vr 3 Constant water rate 2 . Vu=2.08 ft/s 0] = | D Pipe ID 1.025 in Q 0 20 0 Es & 2 FIGURE 14.2 ‘Typical experimental results for vertical, upward air-water flow in the apparatus shown in Fig, 14.1, with constant liquid flow rate. Here V, is Q,/A. [From G. W. Govier, B. A. Radford, and J. S.C. Dunn, “The upward vertical flow of air-water mixtures,” Can. J. Chem. Eng. 35: 58-70 (1957). Reproduced by permission of the publisher.] This is illustrated in Fig. 14.3. At the lowest airflow rates, small bubbles rise through the liquid. As the airflow rate is increased, large single bubbles are formed, which practically fill the tube, driving slugs of liquid between them. At higher rates these slugs become frothy, and finally at high gas flow rates the liquid is present either as an annular film on the walls or as a mist in the gas. Two additional ideas are widely used to correlate the results of experi- ments like that shown in Fig. 14.1: holdup and slip. One can measure what fraction of the tube is occupied by gas, e, and what fraction by liquid, 1 ~ e, in such a flow (experimentally this is done by placing two quick-closing valves in the tube, establishing the flow, and then closing the valves simultaneously and measuring the amounts of gas and liquid so trapped). One might assume that the ratio of gas to liquid, ¢/(1~ e), would be the same as the flow rate ratio of the two streams Q,/Q,, but experimental evidence indicates the contrary. In Fig. 14.2 are shown the experimental values for the holdup ratio, which is the ratio of the liquid-gas volume ratio actually present in the pipe to the liquid-gas volume ratio in the stream passing through [2]. This holdup ratio is always greater than 1 for vertical, upward flow, because some of the liquid is always falling back by gravity and thus having to make several upward trips in order to get out.452, FLUID MECHANICS FOR CHEMICAL. ENGINEERS ; : Semiannular @) Increasing Qp i FIGURE 14.3 ‘Two-phase flow patterns in vertical tubes. The liquid flow rate is upward at a small, constant velocity. The gas flow rate upward increases steadily from left to right. The “annular” pattern shown is often referred to as climbing film flow. [From D. J. Nicklin and J. F. Davidson, “The onset of instability in two-phase slug flow.” in Symposium in Two-Phase Flow, Institution of Mechanical Engineers, London, 1962. Reproduced by permission of the publisher.) We may define an average velocity of the gas in the tube as Vin cue = on ae (14.2) and analogously Vav, tig = Bag =) ! (14.3) The difference between these two is defined as the slip velocity: . t Voip = Vav, gas ~ Va a (2- 2) (14.4) stip Yavsgas~ Yawtig Ae Ime If the holdup ratio were exactly the same as the volumetric flow ratio, then the term in parentheses on the right in Eq. 14.4 would be exactly zero. For actual upward flows the slip velocity is always positive, because the gas mostly moves upward, while the liquid partly moves upward aid partly flows backward downhill because of. gravity, lowering its net average upward velocity.Gas.tioutp FLow 453 Example 14.1. From the data shown in Fig. 14.2 for Q,/Q, = 10, calculate the values of ¥, ¢, and Vii.. We start by reading that at this value of Q,/Q, the holdup ratio is approximately 3.5, so that ne 35 _ = 0,/0,- 1 In Eq. 14.1 we have w in |: 35 €=0.741 3 P= Pyig® + Pyarer(l — €) but since we have ,;, a Q, 1 _ 10-2.06 ft/s we Ace OQ, Aue & 0.741 ip = 27.8 7.9 = 19.9 ft/s = 6.07 m/s . Vertical cocurrent flow of this type is extremely common in engineering. It occurs in almost all flowing and gas-lifted oil wells and in gas-lift pumps. Much of the work done on this type of flow has been connected with boiling of liquids in vertical tubes. In a vertical tube in which a liquid (e.g., water) is being boiled, it is entirely possible to have all the flow patterns shown in Fig. 14.3 present in the same tube at the same time. In that case the fluid enters the bottom of the tube as all liquid. Then as it passes up the tube, more and more of it is converted to a vapor by boiling, so that at the top of the tube it may be all vapor (this is generally avoided in boilers, because it results in a dangerous- ly high metal temperature at the top of the tube). Thus, the various patterns shown in Fig. 14.3 exist at various levels in the same tube, with the bottom of the tube corresponding to the left of Fig. 14.3 and the top corresponding to the right.| ' 454 FLUID MECHANICS FOR CHEMICAL ENGINEERS i | | Because the various flow patterns shown in Fig. 14.3 are so different from each other, it is unlikely that there will ever be a completely successful single description of the friction effect and holdup, of vertical, gas-liquid flows comparable, ¢.g., to the friction factor plot for pipe flow. The various flow forms are so different physically that they cannot be expected to obey the same mathematical relationships. Several such overall correlations are available, e.g., that of Hughmark and Pressburg [3], in which for a variety of fiuids they correlated liquid holdup 1 — ¢ with the group | my, (O,/A + Q,/A)" or 7 a They found that they could represent all the available data for the holdup in such flow on a plot of 1 — e versus this group with an average error of about 12 percent. \ The other approach is to try to find separate e guations for the different flow patterns shown in Fig. 14.3. This approach requires some kind of “flow map” that indicates which fiow pattern will be observed for the conditions of interest and then suitable relations for all the individual flow patterns. There has been considerable progress in this approach [4, 5] One major complication in trying to correlate the behavior of such flows is the fact that for a given choice of fluids, pipe size, and flow rates the quantities ¢ and ¥ are strongly influenced by the design of the gas-liquid mixer. If in Fig. 14.1 we switch from the simple pipe tee mixer to one in which the liquid is introduced through porous walls, this makes no change in our observations in the slug flow region, but it makes a significant change in the observations in the annular and mist flow regions [6, p. 248]. This effect becomes unimportant for very long pipes, but is important for short ones. 14.2, HORIZONTAL GAS-LIQUID FLOW If the apparatus shown in Fig. 14.1 is turned so that the pipe is horizontal, then the behavior will be quite different from that for the vertical case. The observed flow patterns are shown on Fig. 14.4. For alconstant liquid flow rate, as we increase the gas flow rate from zero, at first the gas flows in bubbles along the top of the pipe. Then the bubbles grow in size and length. Finally they become so large that they coalesce into a continuous stream of gas flowing over a continuous layer of liquid. Further increase in Bas velocity causes the gas to raise waves on the liquid surface. These waves grow until they eventually reach across the tube, in which case they are propelled as slugs of liquid with interspersed slugs of gas. Then this pattern switches to the annular pattern observed in vertical gas-liquid flow and finally to a mist flow. Knowledge of the flow pattern can be quite important, If, for example, we are vaporizing a liquid in a horizontal tube under high heat fluxes, then in annular flow the tube wall will always be covered with liquid and presumablyGas-Liquip FLow 455, Vlow-pattorn sketches (Bubble (7) Spray FIGURE 14.4 Flow patterns in horizontal gas-liquid flows. ‘hese are for constant liquid flow rates, with the gas flow rate increasing as shown by the arrows. [From R. S. Brodkey, The Phenomena of Fluid Motions, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass., 1967, as redrawn from G. Alves, “Concurrent liguid-gas flow in a pipeline contactor,” CEP 50: 449-456 (1954). Reproduced by permission of the publisher.] be safe from excessive metal temperatures, But if the flow is stratified, then the top part of the tube will be covered by gas, which is much less effective in conducting heat away from the surface; so the inside metal temperatures may become very high, even to the point of melting the tube. Although several correlations have been proposed for determining what kind of flow patterns will exist [6, pp. 199-277], none is now. known that is universally applicable. Furthermore, the transitions from one kind of flow to another do not occur at sharply defined conditions but may take place over a range of conditions, and as in vertical gas-liquid flow for a given set of fluids and flow rates, the flow pattcrn can be completcly changed and the value of ¥ doubled by simply changing the type of gas-liquid mixer. ‘All available experimental data indicate that ¥ is always higher for two-phase horizontal flow than for single-phase flow under similar conditions.456 FLUID MECHANICS FOR CHEMICAL ENGINEERS ' This is principally due to the movement of the twa phases relative to each other in the tube, which does not contribute to flow,along the tube but does contributc to the conversion of other forms of energy to internal cnergy. For horizontal gas-liquid flow, numerous empirical correlations have been pro- posed, of which the most widely used is that of Lockhart and Martinelli [1]. The comparison of, those correlations with experiment has been extensively reviewed by Scott (6, pp. 199-277], indicating that it is not reliable to more than about +50 percent in’most cases but that, it is as good as any other single correlation. 14.3. TWO-PHASE FLOW WITH BOILING When a liquid at its boiling point flows in a pipe, the|pressure decrease due to friction will cause the pressure of the liquid to fall below its saturation pressure, and the liquid will boil. This type of flow, called flashing flow, is important in the design of boilers, steam condensate lines, etc. The principal difference between this type of flow and those discussed above is that as the pressure falls, more and more) vapor is formed, 80 the volumetric flow rates, average velocities, and pressure drops per foot are not constant for an entire pipe but vary with length. The velocity and pressure gradient increase Tapidly as the amount of vapor increases. Furthermore, in this type of flow it is very common to have the kind of choked condition found in high-velocity gas flows (Sec. 8.3). However, the observed sonic velocities for gas-liquid mixtures are much lower than that for gas alone, so that this choking ‘occurs at velocities much lower than the sonic velocity of the vapor alone. This kind of flow is of great interest in the design of steam boilers and vaporizing furnaces of all kinds [1]. | 14.4. SUMMARY | 1. In gas-liquid flows, numerous different flow patterns are possible, depend- ing on the gas and liquid flow rates and properties and on the direction of the flow relative to the direction of gravity. | 2. For such flows the pressure drop due to friction |heating of the fluids ¥ is always greater than that for single-phase flows under comparable circum- stances. 3. Numerous empirical correlations are available for predicting the pressure _ drop, holdup, and ‘slip velocity for such systems. These are not nearly as reliable as the pressure-drop correlations for single-phase flow: PROBLEMS ; See the Common Units and Values for Problems and Examples inside the back cover.Gasuigum Flow 457 14.1, From the data given in Fig. 14.2, prepare a plot showing the average density of the fluid in the tube p,,, p,.£(23— 21). and p,,F versus Q,/0,. 14.2. From the data in Fig. 14.2, prepare’a plot of slip velocity versus Q,/Q,. 14.3. For the flow discussed in Example 14.1, calculate the values of ¥ which would exist if only the liquid were flowing. and if only the gas were flowing. Compare these with the observed value of # for the simultaneous two-phase flow. 14.4, If we wished to perform the same liquid-lifting task as shown in Example 14.1, we could use the apparatus sketched in Fig. 14.5. For such an apparatus, with the flow rates given in Example 14.1, calculate the necessary pressures at the inlets to the turbine and to the pump (assume that these pressures are the same). Compare these with the necessary pressure at the base of the gas-liquid column in Example 14.1. Assume that the overall vertical elevation change is 20 ft for both gas and liquid in both cases. ‘Mixed flow Gas FIGURE 14.5 Liquid 14.5. For the coffee percolator sketched in Fig. 2.19, on the basis of Bernoulli's equation estimate the maximum possible mass flow rate per unit area of the steam-water mixture in the riser tube 14.6. Figure 14.6 shows the flow diagram of an air-lift or gas-lift pump. In it a fluid is pumped from the lower to the upper reservoir by way of a vertical pipe, into the bottom of which air or gas is introduced, Explain why such pumps are widely used in the processing of the highly radioactive solutions in nuclear fuel processing. FIGURE 14.6 Air lift or gas lift. 14.7. For the pump in Fig. 14.6, sketch a plot of liquid flow rate versus airflow rate for constant geometry and fluid properties. Hint: See Fig. 14.2.