Instability due to interfacial tension in parallel liquid-liquid flow

Abstract

The frequent occurrence of multiphase flows in pipes has motivated a great research interest over the last decades. The particular case of liquid-liquid flow is commonly encountered in the petroleum industry, where a number of applications involve oil-water flow such as crude oil production in directional wells. However, it has not received the same attention when compared to gas-liquid flow. In addition, most of the available information has to do with flow in pipes. When it comes to flows in annular ducts the data are scanty. A general transition criterion has been recently proposed in order to obtain the stratified and core-annular flow-pattern transition boundaries in viscous oil-water flow. The proposed criterion was based on an one-dimensional two-fluid model of liquid-liquid two-phase flow. A stability analysis was carried out and interfacial tension is considered. A new destabilizing term arises, which is a function of the cross-section curvature of the interface. It is well accepted that interfacial tension favors the stable condition. However, the analysis of the new interfacial-tension term shows that it can actually destabilize the basic flow pattern, playing an important role in regions of extreme volumetric fractions. Such an interesting effect seems to be more pronounced in flows of viscous fluids and in annular-duct flow. The effect of interfacial tension is explored and the advantages of using a more complete model are discussed and illustrated through comparisons with experimental data from the literature. The evaluation of the effects of fluid viscosity and interfacial tension allows the correction and enhancement of transition models based essentially on data of pipe flow of low viscosity fluids.