Experimental Investigation and Empirical Analysis of Non-Boiling Gas-Liquid Two Phase Heat Transfer in Vertical Downward Pipe Orientation

Abstract

The non-boiling gas-liquid two phase flow is pertinent to industrial applications like the reduction of paraffin wax depositions in petroleum transport lines, air lift systems and the chemical processes such as ethanol-water fractionation seeking enhanced heat and mass transfer. The non-boiling two phase heat transfer mechanism in horizontal and vertical orientations has been investigated by many researchers. However, till date very little experimental work and investigation has been performed for vertical downward flow. In order to contribute more to this research and have a better understanding of the non-boiling two phase heat transfer phenomenon for this pipe orientation, experimental investigation is undertaken for a vertical downward oriented 0.01252 m I.D. schedule 10 S stainless steel pipe using air-water as fluid combination. The influence of different flow patterns on the two phase convective heat transfer coefficient is studied using experimental measurements of 165 data points for bubbly, slug, froth, falling film and annular flow patterns spanned over the entire range of the void fraction. In general the two phase heat transfer coefficients are found to be consistently higher than that of the single phase flow. This tendency is observed to increase with increase in the gas flow rate as the flow regime migrates from bubbly to the annular flow. The concept of Reynolds analogy as implemented by Tang and Ghajar [1] for horizontal and vertical upward flow is analyzed against the vertical downward flow data collected in the present study. Due to lack of correlations available for predicting the two phase heat transfer coefficient in vertical downward orientation it was decided to perform the quantitative analysis of the seventeen two phase heat transfer correlations available for vertical upward flow. This analysis is concluded by the recommendation of the top performing correlations in the literature for each flow pattern. Based on the pressure drop data and using Reynolds analogy, a simple equation is proposed to correlate the two phase heat transfer coefficient with the single phase heat transfer coefficient.