ARTICLE:

• Effect of mixers on flow pattern and pressure drop in horizontal oil-water pipe flow  download article

A. Soleimani
Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemical Technology, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine, London SW7 2BY, UK

C. J. Lawrence
Department of Chemical Engineering & Chemical Technology, Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine, London SW7 2BY, UK

Geoffrey F. Hewitt
Department of Chemical Engineering & Chemical Technology, Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2BY UK

ABSTRACT

This paper paper a series of experiments to investigate the characteristics in liquid-liquid flow in a horizontal nominal one-inch tube with and without static mixers placed at the beginning of the test section. In these experiments the focus was on determining the flow pattern and pressure drop. The pressure gradient was measured for each point on the flow regime map and an attempt was made to correlate change in pressure drop with change of flow pattern. Two peaks in pressure drop appeared when more than two mixer elements were used. The first peak always appeared in dispersed flow and is associated with phase inversion, while the second was found to depend on the number of elements in the mixer and the position of the pressure gauges along the test section. Three sets of results are presented showing the effect of flow rate, number of mixers and position along the tube on the pressure gradient over the whole range of water cut.

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