An experimental study of the statistical parameters of gas-liquid two-phase slug flow in horizontal pipeline

Experiments were performed in a horizontal test loop with inner diameter 50 mm to study the gas-liquid slug flow. The translational velocities of elongated bubbles, lengths of liquid slugs and elongated bubbles, and slug frequencies were measured using two pairs of conductivity probes. Correlations are presented for elongated bubble translational velocity, length of elongated bubble and slug frequency, respectively. It was found that the translational velocity of elongated bubble is not only dependent on Froude number, but also is significantly affected by the distance from the entrance of pipeline in the higher mixture velocity range. Mean liquid slug length is relatively insensitive to the gas and liquid flow rates in the higher mixture velocity range, however in the lower mixture velocity range, the mean liquid slug length is affected by the mixture velocity. Mean slug frequency clearly increases as the liquid superficial velocity increases but it weakly depends on the gas superficial velocity. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.