Pressure Relief Valves (PRVs) are key elements of any hydraulic system in the process industry, especially in chemical plants or hydraulic power transmission systems. Their task is to maintain the system pressure beneath a prescribed maximum pressure and vent the excessive fluid in an emergency scenario. This paper addresses the static and dynamic behavior of a Direct Spring-Operated PRV of conical shape in the presence of two-phase non-flashing flow, that is, water-air mixture. First, experimental results on the force and discharge characteristics of such a valve in a wide range of the air-to-water mass fraction are presented. Our test facility includes a custom-designed PRV with 42.5 mm inlet pipe diameter, an inlet pressure up to 6.6 bar(g) and a maximum lift of 10 mm. Additionally, the empirical results on the static characteristics, notably fluid force on the valve disc and discharge coefficients are reported as a function of the liquid mass fraction and valve lift. In the second part of the paper, we present the development of a Matlab-based simulation tool that is capable of predicting the dynamics and stability of such a valve in the case of two-phase, non-flashing, frozen-mixture flow. Moreover, the effect of system parameters, such as spring stiffness and reservoir capacity are recorded. Finally, we also present results on the stability of the opening and closing the multi-phase flow influence on the stability of the blowdown process.
Due to the low number of experimental investigations on the sizing of safety valves in multiphase flow, a novel set of measurement data of an air-water mixture is reported. This paper presents an experimental study on three different geometries of safety valves, a poppet valve with jet angle θ = 120°, and two-disc valves with deflection angles θ = 0° and θ = 90°, respectively. Our test rig comprises a pipeline with 42.5 mm inner diameter, spray nozzles to supply the added water quality (water mass fraction) to the pressurized airflow up to 40 % mass fraction and an inlet pressure up to 6.6 bar(g). The time histories of force, valve lift, and pressures were recorded. We present correlation data for the force coefficient and the discharge coefficient. The widely used omega technique for the Homogenous Equilibrium Model (HEM) is employed to predict the theoretical mass flux. The results show that the poppet valve experiences less momentum force and lower mass flow rates compared to disc valves, while the disc valve with deflection angle θ = 90° presents the highest discharged flow rates among the tested geometries. Our most important finding is that up to 60 % relative valve lift and 40 % mass fraction, neither the force nor the discharge coefficient changes significantly compared to the pure-air case. Finally, we propose a new correlation with a single equation for the resultant force and the discharge coefficient as a function of the relative valve lift for all tested water mass fractions.
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