Modeling and simulation of air-water upward annular flow characteristics in a vertical tube using CFD

Abstract

Annular flow refers to a special type of two-phase flow pattern in which liquid flows as a thin film at the periphery of a pipe, tube, or conduit, and gas with relatively high velocity flows at the center of the flow section. This gas also includes dispersed liquid droplets. The liquid film flow rate continuously changes inside the tube due to two processes-entrainment and deposition. To determine the liquid holdup, pressure drop, the onset of dryout, and heat transfer characteristics in annular flow, it is important to have proper knowledge of flow characteristics. Especially a better understanding of entrainment fraction is important for the heat transfer and safe operation of two-phase flow systems operating in an annular two-phase flow regime. Therefore, the objective of this work is to develop a computational model for the simulation of the annular two-phase flow regime and assess the various existing models for the entrainment rate. In this work, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in ANSYS FLUENT has been applied to determine annular flow characteristics such as liquid film thickness, film velocity, entrainment rate, deposition rate, and entrainment fraction for various gas-liquid flow conditions in a vertical upward tube. The gas core with droplets was simulated using the Discrete Phase Model (DPM) which is based on the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach. The Eulerian Wall Film (EWF) model was utilized to simulate liquid film on the tube wall. Three different models of Entrainment rate were implemented and assessed through user-defined functions (UDF) in ANSYS. Finally, entrainment for fully developed flow was determined and compared with the experimental data available in the literature. From the simulations, it was obtained that the Bertodano correlation performed best in predicting entrainment fraction and the results were within the ±30 % limit when compared to experimental data.