Dmitry Eskin

Pressure drop of slug flow in microchannels with increasing void fraction: experiment and modeling

Pressure drop in a gas-liquid slug flow through a long microchannel of rectangular cross-section was investigated. Pressure measurements in a lengthy (∼0.8 m) microchannel determined the pressure gradient to be constant in a flow where gas bubbles progressively expanded and the flow velocity increased due to a significant pressure drop. Most of the earlier studies of slug flow in microchannels considered systems where the expansion of the gas bubbles was negligible in the channel. In contrast, we investigated systems where the volume of the gas phase increased significantly due to a large pressure drop (up to 1811 kPa) along the channel. This expansion of the gas phase led to a significant increase in the void fraction, causing considerable flow acceleration. The pressure drop in the microchannel was studied for three gas-liquid systems; water-nitrogen, dodecane-nitrogen, and pentadecane-nitrogen. Inside the microchannel, local pressure was measured using a series of embedded membranes acting as pressure sensors. Our investigation of the pressure drop showed a linear trend over a wide range of void fractions and flow conditions in the two-phase flow. The lengths and the velocities of the liquid slugs and the gas bubbles were also studied along the microchannel by employing a video imaging technique. Furthermore, a model describing the gas-liquid slug flow in a long microchannel was developed to calculate the pressure drop under conditions similar to the experiments. An excellent agreement between the developed model and the experimental data was obtained.

Lattice Boltzmann simulations of a single n-butanol drop rising in water

The motion of an n-butanol drop in water under the influence of gravity was numerically studied using a diffuse interface free energy lattice Boltzmann method. A pure two-liquid system without mass transfer between the phases was considered. A range of drop diameters of 1.0–4.0 mm covered the flow conditions. Most calculations were carried out in a moving reference frame. This allowed studying of long-term drop behavior in a relatively small computational domain. The capability of the method to capture the drop shape especially in the oscillating regime was demonstrated. For each drop diameter the evolution of the drop velocity in time, the terminal rise velocity and drops shape were determined. The results were compared to experimental and numerical results and to semi-empirical correlations. The deviation of the simulated terminal velocity from other results is within 5% for smaller drops and up to 20% for large oscillating drops. It was shown that beyond the onset of shape oscillations the binary syst...

Pressure Drop of Accelerating Slug Flow in Microchannels: Modeling and Experiment

An investigation on the pressure drop of a gas-liquid slug flow through a long microchannel of rectangular cross-section is presented. A constant pressure gradient in the microchannel was observed in a flow where gas bubbles progressively expanded and the flow velocity increased due to significant pressure drop. In contrast to majority of the earlier studies of slug flow in microchannels, where void fraction was nearly constant throughout the channel, we investigated systems where the volume of the gas phase increased significantly due to large pressure drop (up to 2000 kPa) along the lengthy (∼1 m) channel. This expansion of the gas phase led to a significant increase in the void fraction, causing considerable increase in flow velocity. Local pressure was measured along the channel using a series of embedded membranes acting as pressure sensors. The axial pressure profile for a gas-liquid system, namely, Dodecane/Nitrogen was studied. Our investigation on pressure gradient showed linear trend over a wide range of void fractions (30–90%) and flow conditions in the two-phase flow. The lengths and the velocities of the liquid slugs and the gas bubbles were also studied along the microchannel by employing video imaging technique. Furthermore, a model describing the gas-liquid slug flow in long microchannels was developed. Excellent agreement between the developed model and the experimental data was obtained.Copyright