Annular Flow Regime Research Articles

Experimental investigation of the liquid volumetric mass transfer coefficient for upward gas-liquid two-phase flow in rectangular microchannels

The gas-liquid two-phase mass transfer process in microchannels is complicated due to the special dynamical characteristics. In this work, a novel method was explored to measure the liquid side volumetric mass transfer coefficient kLa. Pressure transducers were utilized to measure the pressure variation of upward gas-liquid two-phase flow in three vertical rectangular microchannels and the liquid side volumetric mass transfer coefficient kLa was calculated through the Pressure-Volume-Temperature correlation of the gas phase. Carbon dioxide-water, carbon dioxide-ethanol and carbon dioxide-n-propanol were used as working fluids, respectively. The dimensions of the microchannels were 40 µm×240 µm (depth×width), 100 µm×800 µm and 100 µm×2000 µm, respectively. Results showed that the channel diameter and the capillary number influence kLa remarkably and that the maximum value of kLa occurs in the annular flow regime. A new correlation of kLa was proposed based on the Sherwood number, Schmidt number and the capillary number. The predicted values of kLa agreed well with the experimental data.

Identification of Boiling Two-Phase Flow Regimes Based on Two Kinds of Neural Networks

In this paper, the boiling phenomena of steam boiler under atmospheric pressure are simulated by using the UDF program of CFD software. Characteristics including pressure, temperature and vapor fraction respectively for bubble, slug and annular flow regimes are extracted as the input characteristic vectors of the BP neural network and Elman neural network for the purpose of identifying the boiling two-phase (vapor/liquid) flow regimes within wall tubes. It reveals that the rate of recognition accuracy of flow regimes with BP neural network is up to 95.24%, as well as 100% with Elman neural network within the groups taken into consider. By analyzing relations between flow regimes, wall temperature and wall heat transfer coefficient, it is found that changes in flow regimes will cause drastic variation in heat transfer coefficient of the wall surface, and the coefficient reduces rapidly as the wall temperature increases and eventually converge to a minimum. It is a very effective method of using numerical simulation to extract the signal under poor experimental conditions, and is good reference for the further research.

The discharge coefficient of effervescent atomizers

The paper contains the results of experimental investigation of air–water atomization process in effervescent nozzles with internal mixing. The aim of study was analysis of pressure drop and discharge coefficient. The study was carried out at liquid flow rates changed from 0.0014 to 0.011 [kg/s] and gas flow rates from 0.00015 to 0.0065 [kg/s]. It corresponded to gas to liquid mass ratio ( GLR) values from 0.014 to 0.46. The experimental results show that C D is a non-linear function of GLR. Their values are decreasing rapidly as GLR is increased from zero to around 0.07 and thereafter decreasing at a slower rate with further increase in GLR. The two regimes were observed. The first regime is characteristic for bubbly flow. The second is typical of annular flow regime. Boundary between bubbly and annular flow regime is observed at GLR = 0.07 for investigated systems. The experimental results show that C D is a function of GLR( d/ D) and give the common correlation for all geometries studied. The correlations for C D as a function of GLR( d/ D) are proposed.

Comparison of the Flow Field of a Swirl Stabilized Premixed Burner in an Annular and a Single Burner Combustion Chamber

An experimental investigation of the flow field of a 12 burner annular combustor and a single burner combustor with the same burner was performed. It has revealed the aerodynamic effect, which causes the discrepancies in the flame transfer function behavior measured at the same operating conditions in the single and the annular combustion chambers. The results have shown significant differences in the flow field. In particular, it is seen that for the investigated system in the annular combustor a free swirling jet flow forms, while in the single burner configuration, a swirling wall jet flow regime exists. In this paper, we discuss the physical mechanism and show how to generalize an earlier finding, which identified a critical confinement value for a given swirler. We propose a new correlation for coswirling burners, which explains the changes found for the investigated system. It compares also well with the experimental data from other burner geometries. The correlation should allow to design single burner tests as to match the annular combustor flow regime.

Analytical Modeling of Annular Flow Boiling Heat Transfer in Mini- and Microchannel Heat Sinks

An analytical model is proposed to predict the flow boiling heat transfer coefficient in the annular flow regime in mini- and microchannel heat sinks based on the separated model. The modeling procedure includes a formulation for determining the heat transfer coefficient based on the wall shear stress and the local thermophysical characteristics of the fluid based on the Reynolds’ analogy. The frictional and acceleration pressure gradients within the channel are incorporated into the present model to provide a better representation of the flow conditions. The model is validated against collected data sets from the literature produced by different authors under different experimental conditions, different fluids, and with mini- and microchannels of hydraulic diameters falling within the range of 92–1440 μm. The accuracy between the experimental and predicted results is achieved with a mean absolute error of 10%. The present analytical model can correctly predict the different trends of the heat transfer coefficient reported in the literature as a function of the exit quality. The predicted two-phase heat transfer coefficient is found to be very sensitive to changes in mass flux and saturation temperature. However, it is found to be mildly sensitive to the change in heat flux.

Comparison of frictional pressure drop models during annular flow condensation of R600a in a horizontal tube at low mass flux and of R134a in a vertical tube at high mass flux

This study compares well-known two-phase pressure drop models with the experimental results of a condensation pressure drop of (i) R600a in a 1 m long horizontal smooth copper tube with an inner diameter of 4 mm, outer diameter of 6 mm and (ii) R134a in a 0.5 m vertical smooth copper tube with an inner diameter of 8.1 mm and outer diameter of 9.52 mm. Different vapour qualities (0.45–0.9 for R600a and 0.7–0.95 for R134a), various mass fluxes (75–115 kg m −2 s −1 for R600a and 300–400 for R134a kg m −2 s −1) and different condensing temperatures (30–43 °C for R600a and 40–50 °C for R134a) were tested under annular flow conditions. The quality of the refrigerant in the test section was calculated considering the temperature and pressure obtained from the experiment. The pressure drop across the test section was directly measured with a differential pressure transducer. The most agreeable correlations of various available options were then identified according to the results of analysis during annular flow regime.

Improved flow pattern map for accurate prediction of the heat transfer coefficients during condensation of R-134a in smooth horizontal tubes and within the low-mass flux range

This paper presents an improved flow pattern map for predicting the heat transfer coefficients during condensation of R-134a inside a smooth horizontal tube. Experimental tests were conducted over the low-mass flux range of 75–300 kg/m 2 s, at a nominal saturation temperature of 40 °C, and with the test section vapour qualities ranging from 0.76 down to 0.03. This represents points within the annular, intermittent and stratified flow regimes. The results were used to modify the Thome–El Hajal flow pattern map to include a transition region between the stratified-wavy and annular or intermittent flow regimes. The revised flow pattern-based heat transfer correlation predicted the experimental data to a mean deviation of less than 6%.

Experiments during flow boiling of a R22 drop-in: R422D adiabatic pressure gradients

R22, the HCFC most widely used in refrigeration and air-conditioning systems in the last years, is phasing-out. R422D, a zero ozone-depleting mixture of R125, R134a and R600a (65.1%/31.5%/3.4% by weight, respectively), has been recently proposed as a drop-in substitute. For energy consumption calculations and temperature control, it is of primary importance to estimate operating conditions after substitution. To determine pressure drop in the evaporator and piping line to the compressor, in this paper the experimental adiabatic pressure gradients during flow boiling of R422D are reported for a circular smooth horizontal tube (3.00 mm inner radius) in a range of operating conditions of interest for dry-expansion evaporators. The data are used to establish the best predictive method for calculations and its accuracy: the Moreno-Quibèn and Thome method provided the best predictions for the whole database and also for the segregated data in the annular flow regime. Finally, the experimental data have been compared with the adiabatic pressure gradients of both R22 and its much used alternative R407C available in the literature.

Flow map and measurement of void fraction and heat transfer coefficient using an image analysis technique for flow boiling of water in a silicon microchannel

The present work focuses on the generation of the flow regime map for two-phase water flow in microchannels of a hydraulic diameter of 140 µm. An image analysis algorithm has been developed and utilized to obtain the local void fraction. The image processing technique is also employed to identify and estimate the percentage of different flow regimes and heat transfer coefficient, as a function of position, heat flux and mass flow rate. Both void fraction and heat transfer coefficient are found to increase monotonically along the length of the microchannel. At low heat flux and low flow rates, bubbly, slug and annular flow regimes are apparent. However, the flow is predominately annular at high heat flux and high flow rate. A breakup of the flow frequency suggests that the flow is bistable in the annular regime, in that at a fixed location, the flow periodically switches from single-phase liquid to annular and vice versa. Otherwise, the occurrence of three regimes—single-phase liquid, bubbly and slug are observed. These results provide several useful insights about two-phase flow in microchannels besides being of fundamental interest.

Generalized neural network model of alternative refrigerant (R600a) inside a smooth tube

The correct prediction of refrigerant condensation heat transfer performance is important for design of condensers. A generalized neural network correlation for condensation heat transfer coefficient of alternative refrigerant R600a inside horizontal tube has been developed in this paper. Mass flow rate, vapor qualities, saturation temperature, difference value temperature are selected as the input parameters, while the Nusselt number and heat transfer coefficient as the output. Three-layer network is used for predicting the Nusselt number and the heat transfer coefficient. The number of the neurons in the hidden layer was determined by a trial and error process together with cross-validation of the experimental data evaluating the performance of the network and standard sensitivity analysis. The trained network gives the best values over the correlations with less than 4% mean relative error. The experimental data of the heat transfer coefficients of R600a, a hydrocarbon refrigerant, in a horizontal smooth copper tube with an inner diameter of 4 mm and outer diameter of 6 mm are from Agra et al. [O. Agra, “Condensation of refrigerants in a horizontal tube in annular flow regime”, PhD thesis Yildiz Technical University, 2007]. The condensing heat transfer coefficients obtained from the experimental study were seen to be consistent by ± 20% with the correlations developed by Shah [M.M. Shah, A general correlation for heat transfer during film condensation inside pipes, Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer 22 (1979) 547–556], Travis [D.P. Traviss, W.M. Rohsenow, A.B. Baron, Forced convection condensation inside tubes: a heat transfer equation for condenser design, ASHRAE Trans. 79 (1972) 157–165] and Cavallini-Zecchin [A. Cavallini, R. Zecchin, A dimensionless correlation for heat transfer in forced convection condensation, Proceedings of the Fifth International Heat Transfer Conference, vol. 3, 1974, pp. 309–313]. And it is seen that results from the trained network shows good agreement with the experimental data and better results than the correlations given by Shah, Cavallini and Travis.

Liquid film dryout in a boiling channel under flow oscillation conditions

A simple theory was developed to elucidate the influence of sinusoidal oscillation of the inlet flow rate on the occurrence of liquid film dryout in an annular two-phase flow regime in a boiling channel. The theory assumes that the critical heat flux (CHF) under an oscillatory condition can be calculated from values in steady states provided that the effect of axial mixing of the liquid film is appropriately considered. The trends of CHFs calculated using a one-dimensional three-fluid model and those experimentally measured under atmospheric pressure were in reasonable agreement with the proposed theory. However, the CHF values measured under oscillatory conditions were usually higher in the experiment than in the numerical simulation, which indicated that axial liquid transport induced by disturbance waves might enhance axial mixing of the liquid film.

Heat Transfer Enhancement during Condensation in Smooth Tubes with Helical Wire Inserts

This study investigates the heat transfer characteristics of a horizontal tube-in-tube heat exchanger with a helical wire inserted in the inner tube. The influence of the pitch (or helix angle) of the wire on the heat transfer performance and pressure drop during condensation (having all other geometric parameters the same) was investigated experimentally. Tests were conducted for condensing refrigerants R22, R134a, and R407C at an average saturation temperature of 40°C, with mass fluxes ranging from 300–800 kg/m2s and with vapor qualities ranging from 0.85–0.95 at condenser inlet to 0.05–0.15 at condenser outlet. Measurements were made for three helical wire-inserted tubes with different pitches of 5, 7.77, and 11 mm. The local and average heat transfer coefficients were compared not only with the measured data of a smooth tube, but also with the results of micro-fin tubes. The tube with a helical wire pitch of 5 mm inserts was found to have the highest enhancement factor, which can be elucidated by the extension of the annular flow regime. Heat transfer coefficient correlations for helical wire inserts were deduced, and they predicted the experimental data to within 20%.

Prediction of evaporation heat transfer coefficient based on gas–liquid two-phase annular flow regime in horizontal microfin tubes

A physical model of gas–liquid two-phase annular flow regime is presented for predicting the enhanced evaporation heat transfer characteristics in horizontal microfin tubes. The model is based on the equivalence of a periodical distortion of the disturbance wave in the substrate layer. Corresponding to the stratified flow model proposed previously by authors, the dimensionless quantity Fr 0 = G/[ gd eρ v ( ρ l − ρ v )] 0.5 may be used as a measure for determining the applicability of the present theoretical model, which was used to restrict the transition boundary between the stratified-wavy flow and the annular/intermittent flows. Comparison of the prediction of the circumferential average heat transfer coefficient with available experimental data for four tubes and three refrigerants reveals that a good agreement is obtained or the trend is better than that of the previously developed stratified flow model for Fr 0 > 4.0 as long as the partial dry out of tube does not occur. Obviously, the developed annular model is applicable and reliable for evaporation in horizontal microfin tubes under the case of high heat flux and high mass flux.

Direct and Inverse Modeling of a Microwave Sensor Determining the Proportion of Fluids in a Pipeline

A microwave sensor constituted of both low- and high-frequency probes is presented. The role of the sensor is to determine the proportion of mixed fluids in a pipeline used in petroleum engineering to extract oil from an oil layer. In this paper, the annular flow regime in the pipeline is considered. Since the analytical solution for this configuration is not available for high frequencies, a combination of numerical modeling and neural networks (NNs) is used. Two inversion configurations are compared. Good results are obtained with the better one.

Method for the annular gas-liquid mixture flow regime in a vertical cylindrical channel

A mathematical model for the annular gas-liquid mixture flow in the cylindrical channel is described. The influence of an upward turbulent gas flow on the downward liquid film is considered. The problem is numerically solved and the calculation results are compared with the experimental data.

PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFERVESCENT ATOMIZER IN DIFFERENT FLOW REGIMES

The characteristics of the two-phase flow and the spray formed in an effervescent atomizer were experimentally investigated over a range of flow rates, gas-to-liquid ratios (GLR), injection pressures, and discharge orifice diameters. The Reynolds number (Re), defined with the orifice diameter as the characteristic length, was seen to be a pertinent parameter in addition to GLR for determining the transition from the bubbly flow to slug flow. The discharge coefficient of the atomizer in the bubbly flow regime and the Sauter mean diameter of the spray in the annular flow regime were found to scale with the parameter {GLR (Re)0.5}. The structure of the spray and the measured values of cone angle of the spray showed distinctly different features in the bubbly, slug, and annular flow regimes. A two-dimensional simulation of the flow and spray structure reproduced the gross features observed in the experiments.

Modeling of Pressure Drop During Condensation in Circular and Noncircular Microchannels

This paper presents a multiple flow-regime model for pressure drop during condensation of refrigerant R134a in horizontal microchannels. Condensation pressure drops measured in two circular and six noncircular channels ranging in hydraulic diameter from 0.42mmto0.8mm are considered here. For each tube under consideration, pressure drop measurements were taken over the entire range of qualities from 100% vapor to 100% liquid for five different refrigerant mass fluxes between 150kg∕m2s and 750kg∕m2s. Results from previous work by the authors on condensation flow mechanisms in microchannel geometries were used to assign the applicable flow regime to the data points. Garimella et al. (2005, “Condensation Pressure Drop in Circular Microchannels,” Heat Transfer Eng., 26(3) pp. 1–8) reported a comprehensive model for circular tubes that addresses the progression of the condensation process from the vapor phase to the liquid phase by modifying and combining the pressure drop models for intermittent (Garimella et al., 2002, “An Experimentally Validated Model for Two-Phase Pressure Drop in the Intermittent Flow Regime for Circular Microchannels,” ASME J. Fluids Eng., 124(1), pp. 205–214) and annular (Garimella et al., 2003, “Two-Phase Pressure Drops in the Annular Flow Regime in Circular Microchannels,” 21st IIR International Congress of Refrigeration, International Institute of Refrigeration, p. ICR0360) flows reported earlier by them. This paper presents new condensation pressure drop data on six noncircular channels over the same flow conditions as the previous work on circular channels. In addition, a multiple flow-regime model similar to that developed earlier by Garimella et al. for circular microchannels is developed here for these new cross sections. This combined model accurately predicts condensation pressure drops in the annular, disperse-wave, mist, discrete-wave, and intermittent flow regimes for both circular and noncircular microchannels of similar hydraulic diameters. Overlap and transition regions between the respective regimes are also addressed to yield relatively smooth transitions between the predicted pressure drops. The resulting model predicts 80% of the data within ±25%. The effect of tube shape on pressure drop is also demonstrated.

Experimental Study of gas–liquid two-phase flow affected by wall surface wettability

To evaluate the effect of wall surface wettability on the characteristics of upward gas–liquid two-phase flow in a vertical pipe, an experimental study was performed using three test pipes: an acrylic pipe, a hydrophilic pipe and a hydrophobic pipe. Basic flow characteristics such as flow patterns, pressure drop and void fraction were measured in these three pipes. In the hydrophilic pipe, a slug to churn flow transition boundary was shifted to a higher gas velocity at a given liquid velocity, whereas a churn to annular flow transition boundary was shifted to a lower gas velocity at a given liquid velocity. In the hydrophobic pipe, an inverted-churn flow regime was observed in the region where the churn flow regime was observed in the acrylic pipe, while a droplet flow regime was observed in the region where an annular flow regime was observed in the acrylic pipe. At a high gas flow rate, the mean void fraction in the hydrophobic pipe was higher than in the acrylic pipe. The effect of surface wettability on frictional pressure loss was confirmed to be insignificant under the present experimental conditions.

Prediction of frictional pressure drop during flow boiling of refrigerants in horizontal tubes: Comparison to an experimental database

An experimental frictional pressure drop database for smooth tubes including 485 points from the literature is compared to four well-known correlations and also to the phenomenological model by Moreno Quibén and Thome. This model is new and has never been compared to those experimental data. The Grönnerud correlation and the flow pattern based two-phase frictional pressure drop model by Moreno Quibén and Thome display the best prediction. Seventy-four percent of the data are predicted by the latter model within a ±30% error band. Furthermore, the model by Moreno Quibén and Thome predicts a maximum pressure drop before the annular-to-dryout transition, i.e. as usually in the annular flow regime. An explicit expression (never proposed before) for the vapor quality corresponding to the maximum pressure drop ( x M) is developed here. Based on this maximum and on the pressure drop for liquid and vapor, a simple linear function is developed for predicting the frictional pressure drop. This method presents the best accuracy and predicts almost 86% of the data within a ±30% error band. This method does not include any new empirical parameters and can be used for a wide range of experimental conditions. Furthermore, the experimental data were also segregated into flow regimes and compared to each individual prediction method. The linear approach presents the best statistics for each flow regime. In addition, an experimental frictional pressure drop database for helically microfinned tubes including 673 points from the literature is also compared to three existing correlations. The Kuo and Wang correlation presents the best statistics, predicting almost 85% of the data within a ±30% error band.

High heat flux flow boiling in silicon multi-microchannels – Part II: Heat transfer characteristics of refrigerant R245fa

This article is the second in a three-part study. This second part focuses on flow boiling heat transfer of refrigerant R245fa in a silicon multi-microchannel heat sink and their comparison with the results presented in part I for refrigerant R236fa. This heat sink was the same as utilized in part I. The test conditions covered base heat fluxes from 3.6 to 190 W/cm 2, mass velocities from 281 to 1501 kg/m 2 s and the exit vapour qualities from 0% to 78%. The effect of saturation pressure on heat transfer was tested from 141 to 273 kPa for R245fa and the effect of sub-cooling from 0 to 19 K. The R245fa database includes 693 local heat transfer coefficient measurements, for which four different heat transfer trends were identified, although in most cases the heat transfer coefficient increased with heat flux, was almost independent of vapour quality and increased with mass velocity. The entire database, including both R245fa and R236fa measurements, was compared with four prediction methods for flow boiling heat transfer in microchannels. The three-zone model of Thome et al. (J.R. Thome, V. Dupont, A.M. Jacobi, Heat transfer model for evaporation in microchannels. Part I: presentation of the model, International J. Heat Mass Transfer 47 (2004) 3375–3385) was found to give the best predictions, capturing 90% of the data within ±30% in the slug and annular flow regimes ( x > 5%).