EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF LIQUID ACCUMULATION EFFECTS DURING ORIFICE GAS METERING OF 2-PHASE FLOW

A series of experiments was carried out to investigate the effect of liquid accumulation upstream of an orifice meter in a horizontal pipeline. The orifice meter was used to measure gas flow which contains small amounts of liquid. The experiments have verified that significant amounts of liquid will accumulate at low gas flow rates. The accumulated level is independent of the gas mass to total mass how fraction within the investigated range from 0.91 to 0.95. The accumulated liquid will affect the form of the vena contracta. This will result in the observation of a lower differential pressure drop across the orifice for a given flow rate, and errors in the determination of gas mass flow will be introduced. An iterative method to quantify the effect of the accumulated liquid upstream of the orifice is suggested.