Friction factor improved correlations for laminar and turbulent gas–liquid flow in horizontal pipelines

Abstract

We develop improved correlations for two-phase flow friction factor that consider the effect of the relative velocity of the phases, based on a database that includes 2560 gas–liquid flow experiments in horizontal pipes. The database includes a wide range of operational conditions and fluid properties for two-phase friction factor correlations. We classify the experiments by liquid holdup ranges to obtain composite analytical expressions for two-phase friction factor vs. the Reynolds number by fitting logistic dose curves to the experimental data with. We compute the liquid holdup values used to classify the experimental data using correlations proposed previously. The Reynolds number is based on the mixture velocity and the liquid kinematic viscosity. The Fanning friction factor for gas–liquid is defined in term of the mixture velocity and density. Additionally, we sort the experimental data by flow regime and obtain the two-phase friction factor improved correlations for dispersed bubble, slug, stratified and annular flow for different holdup ranges. We report error estimates for the predicted vs. measured friction factor together with standard deviation for each correlation. The accuracy of the correlations developed in this study is compared with that of other 21 correlations and models widely available in the specialized literature. Since different authors use different definitions for friction factors and Reynolds numbers, we present comparisons of the predicted pressure drop for each and every data point in the database. In most cases our correlations predict the pressure drop with much greater accuracy than those presented by previous authors.