Experimental investigations on two-phase pressure drop in small diameter at horizontal orientation

Two-Phase flow occurs in number of industrial applications such as refrigeration and air-conditioning equipment, nuclear reactors and petroleum refineries etc. Accurate estimation of two-phase pressure drop is important in the design of these equipment. Two-phase pressure drop depends on several parameters including the mass fluxes of the phases, orientation of the channel and the cross section of the channel. This paper presents an experimental study of adiabatic air-water two-phase flow in small diameter tubes. Experiments were conducted in circular transparent tubes of 6.0, 8.0 and 10.0 mm diameter at horizontal orientation. Experiments were conducted for the mass flux ranging from 16.11 to 1722.2 kg/m(2) s. The experimental two-phase pressure drop was compared with some of the existing correlations. Comparison showed the inadequacy of the existing correlations to predict the experimental data. A new empirical correlation was developed based on the experimental data in terms of fluid properties. The developed correlation showed good agreement with the present experimental data.