Improved General Correlation for Heat Transfer During Gas-Liquid Flow in Horizontal Tubes

Heat transfer to two-component gas-liquid mixtures is needed in many industries but there is lack of a well-verified predictive method. A correlation is presented for heat transfer during flow of gas-liquid nonboiling mixtures in horizontal tubes. It has been verified with a wide range of data that includes tube diameters of 4.3-57 mm, pressures from 1 to 4.1 bar, temperatures from 12 to 62 degrees C, gravity <0.1% to 100% earth gravity, liquid Reynolds number from 9 to 1.2 x 10(5), and ratio of gas and liquid velocities from 0.24 to 9298. The 946 data points from 18 sources are predicted with mean absolute deviation (MAD) of 19.2%. The same data were compared to five other correlations; they had much larger deviations. Therefore, the new correlation is likely to be helpful in more accurate designs.