Pressure Drop in a Capillary Tube in Boiling Two-Phase Flow

Abstract

Two-phase pressure drop is experimentally examined in a flow boiling condition in a tube of diameter 1.45 mm using water in ranges of pressure from 10 to 100 kPa, mass flux from 18 to 152 kg/m2s, heat flux from 13 to 646 kW/m2, and exit quality from 0.02 to 0.77. Also, pressure drop in an adiabatic air-water two-phase flow is measured at atmospheric pressure using the same test section and mass flux ranges of liquid and gas as those in the flow boiling. Decreasing system pressure the pressure drop significantly increases at a given mass flux. Influence of vapor phase on the pressure drop is found to be large both in the adiabatic and the diabatic conditions. The frictional pressure drop correlation for the adiabatic two-phase flow is developed and applied to predict pressure drop in the flow boiling. But it cannot give satisfactory predictions. The Chisholm correlation calculating a two-phase pressure drop multiplier is modified to account the influence of vapor phase in a capillary tube and the modified correlation can predict the pressure drop in the flow boiling within an error of 20%.