Dispersed two-phase swirling flow characterization for predicting gas carry-under in gas-liquid cylindrical cyclone compact separators

The hydrodynamics of dispersed two-phase swirling flow behavior have been studied theoretically and experimentally for prediction of gas carry-under and evaluating the performance of Gas-Liquid Cylindrical Cyclone (GLCC ©1) separators.; The GLCC operation is limited by two undesirable physical phenomena; one is liquid carry-over (LCO) in the gas stream and the other is gas carry-under (GCU) in the liquid stream. LCO can occur in the gas leg in the form of droplets. GCU is the entrainment of gas bubbles into the exiting liquid stream. Prediction of these two phenomena will allow proper design and operation of the GLCC for the industry.; The objective of this study is twofold: to study experimentally the hydrodynamics of dispersed two-phase swirling flow in the lower part of the GLCC, and, to develop a mechanistic model for the characterization of this complex flow behavior, enabling the prediction of gas carry-under in the GLCC.; The developed mechanistic model is composed of several sub-models as follows: (1) Gas entrainment in the inlet region. (2) Continuous-phase swirling flow behavior in the lower part of the GLCC. (3) Dispersed-phase particle (bubbles) motion. (4) Diffusion of dispersed-phase. (5) Coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian analysis. (6) Lagrangian-Bubble Tracking Analysis. (7) Simplified Mechanistic Models.; Integration of the above sub-models yields the amount of gas being carried-under, and the separation efficiency of the GLCC. Two solution schemes are proposed, namely, the Eulerian-Lagrangian Diffusion model (using finite volume method) and Lagrangian-Bubble Tracking model. Simplified mechanistic models for these two approaches are also developed.; Large amounts of local measurements of swirling flow data were processed and analyzed to develop correlations for the swirling flow field and the associated turbulent quantities. These correlations are used in the proposed models. Also, experimental data on gas-carry under were acquired for air-water flow.; The presented results include the performance of the developed correlations for the swirling flow field and its turbulent quantities. Also presented are the results for both solution schemes and the performance of the mechanistic model. The results presented demonstrate the potential of the proposed approach for predicting the void fraction distribution in dispersed two-phase swirling flow and the associated gas carry-under in GLCC separators.; 1GLCC© - Gas Liquid Cylindrical Cyclone - Copyright, The University of Tulsa, 1994.