Estudo experimental da influência da pressão no escoamento bifásico gás-líquido em golfadas em dutos horizontais

Abstract

Two-phase liquid-gas flow are commonly found in industrial uses, mainly in oil and gas, chemical and nuclear industries. Different geometrical configurations, known as flow pattern, are found in two-phase flows. They occur with the variation of parameters such as flow rate of the phases, dimensions of the pipeline and properties of the fluids. In the oil production the pattern most commonly found is the slug flow, in which regions of continuous liquid (slug) and regions of gas predominance (Taylor bubble) are alternated. Such flow pattern is usually submitted to high pressures. This work aim to experimentally evaluate the influence of the pressure in liquid-gas two-phase flow under the slug pattern in horizontal pipelines. To achieve this goal controlled flows are produced, in which some characteristic parameters are obtained. Water and air are used as work fluids. The experimental setup, adapted to provide the conditions of interest, is located at the LACIT (Thermal Sciences Laboratory of UTFPR). Two different techniques are used in order to extract flow parameters: high speed videometry and ultrasound transducers. Based on the values found it was possible to ascertain that the increase of the gauge pressure to values up to 6 bar, under constant superficial velocities of the phases, do not have significative influence on the flow parameters evaluated.