Frictional pressure drop correlation for two-phase flows in mini and micro single-channels

Abstract

1521 frictional pressure drop data points were collected from 12 literatures. The database included adiabatic and diabatic systems composed of 10 working fluids. The diameter range was from 0.1 to 3mm, and the pressure drop ranged from 1.26kPa/m to 2MPa/m. 17 existing single channel two-phase pressure drop correlations including homogenous flow model and separated flow model were evaluated with the database. The comparison results showed that the correlations of Pamitran et al., Hwang and Kim, Mishima and Hibiki and Zhang et al. gave better predictions than the others. However, the performance evaluation results also showed the mean absolute errors higher than 40%. Based on the relatively large prediction error by the existing correlations, a new correlation was proposed by classifying the flow conditions into four regimes (namely, 1: gas laminar-liquid laminar, 2: gas laminar-liquid turbulent, 3: gas turbulent-liquid laminar, 4: gas turbulent-liquid turbulent). The newly developed correlation is expressed by a function of the two-phase Reynolds number, Retp, the two-phase viscosity number, Nμtp, and the gas quality, x, and was able to predict the two-phase frictional pressure drop with the mean absolute percentage error of 17.4%. The correlation demonstrated an excellent performance for predicting the two-phase frictional pressure drop in mini/micro single channels.