Phase distribution of nitrogen–water two-phase flow in parallel micro channels

Abstract

The present work experimentally investigated the phase splitting characteristics of gas–liquid two-phase flow passing through a horizontal-oriented micro-channel device with three parallel micro-channels. The hydraulic diameters of the header and the branch channels were 0.6 and 0.4 mm, respectively. Five different liquids, including de-ionized water and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) solution with different concentration were employed. Different from water, the surface tension of SDS solution applied in this work decreased with the increment of mass concentration. Through series of visual experiments, it was found that the added SDS surfactant could obviously facilitate the two-phase flow through the parallel micro channels while SDS solution with low concentration would lead to an inevitable blockage of partial outlet branches. Experimental results revealed that the two phase distribution characteristics depended highly on the inlet flow patterns and the outlet branch numbers. To be specific, at the inlet of slug flow, a large amount of gas preferred flowing into the middle branch channel while the first branch was filled with liquid. However, when the inlet flow pattern was shifted to annular flow, all of the gas passed through the second and the last branches, with a little proportion of liquid flowing into the first channel. By comparison with the experimental results obtained from a microchannel device with five parallel micro-T channels, uneven distribution of the two phase can be markedly noticed in our present work.