Research in Velocity Profile and Pressure Distribution in 2D Conduit Flow with Stagger Arranged liquid separator blocks

Abstract

This work uses ANSYS Fluent commercial software to develop a pipe liquid separator model with inside staggered arranged diamond-rectangular shaped blocks for liquid separating. This model serves to liquid separating process in large diameter pipes. All computations are conducted under laminar flow with 200 iterations, and the residues are constantly monitored to ensure accuracy. Two different block sizes and two different inlet velocities are tested for comparison and analysis. Streamline plots and pressure contours are plotted and analyzed for separating performance and pressure drop. The model works well on separating for any combination of inlet velocity and block size. Velocity does not influence performance a lot, but larger blocks have better performance. The pressure drop is significant in these models. Increasing velocity or block size would greatly increase pressure drop, which means the model may work at low velocity for a pressure-sensitive environment. The fitted math relationship between parameters is not fully analyzed and could be developed in future work.