Flow-Regime of a Liquid-Liquid Counter Current Two-Phase Flow

Abstract

A liquid-liquid countercurrent flow has an extensive application in many industrial processes, petroleum chemical industry in particular. Accurate knowledge of the behavior of flow regime in a pipeline flow is crucial to design/optimize production, transportation and processing facilities. In this current research work, the focus is to experimentally capture and categorize the flow regime occurring during liquid-liquid countercurrent two-phase flow by varying flow rates of both the phases individually. Kerosene and water are taken as test fluids, and the experiments were carried out at different orientations to capture the effect of gravity in formation of the flow regimes. Different flow regime has been demarcated visually with the aid of a high-speed camera, though visual description can be subjective and can vary from person to person. An objective description of flow regimes is captured in terms of time-varying signals coming from different probes and sensors. At the end, statistical analysis have been carried out to characterize the signals in terms of some statistical parameters.