Swirl Effects On Gas-Liquid Upward Vertical Pipe Flow

Abstract

When swirl is added to gas-liquid upward vertical pipe flows (e.g. inside an inline swirl separator), the classical flow patterns are modified by the centrifugal forces which act pushing the gas towards the center of the pipe and the liquid towards the wall. If the swirl is strong enough, this leads to the formation of a gas column in the center of the pipe, which can be either stable or intermittent. It was observed experimentally that the behavior of the gas column is strongly dependent on the dynamics of the gas-liquid flow upstream of the addition of swirl. In this video, a high speed camera was used to record the gas-liquid flow upstream and downstream of a swirl-generating element for different flow rates of liquid and gas, covering multiple non-swirling (upstream) and swirling flow patterns (downstream). The video: (i) shows the different swirling gas-liquid flow patterns and their dynamic behavior; (ii) analyzes the connection between the dynamics of the swirl patterns and the gas-liquid patterns upstream of the swirl element, via synchronized recordings of the two locations.