Experimental Investigation of the Performance of a Novel Adiabatic Swirl-Flow Separation Apparatus in Air–Water Two-Phase Flow

Abstract

Experiments were performed for determining the efficacy of a swirl-flow apparatus for phase separation of a premixed two-phase air–water mixture. In the experiments gas and liquid flow rates were parametrically varied. The goal of this study was to determine the ideal operating conditions for phase separation of an adiabatic mixture and to serve as a benchmark for future desalination experiments involving separation of vapor-saline water two-phase mixture generated by flash evaporation. The novel swirl-flow apparatus enables the formation of a stable air core (lighter fluid) in the middle of the separator tube due to centrifugal force induced by strategically injecting the two-phase mixture tangentially into the tubular test section. Separated air is removed by tapping into the air core using a retrieval tube that is mounted in the center of the test section. Conditions under which maximum phase-separation efficiency is obtained in the swirl-flow apparatus were identified and a correlation for the phase-separation efficiency is proposed for the range of experimental conditions explored in this study.