A Revised Analysis of the Effect of Surfactants on Two‐Phase Phenomena in Horizontal Air‐Water Pipe Flow

Abstract

Flow regimes, hold-up and pressure loss measurements in two-phase air-water co

Liquid Layer Characteristics in Stratified Gas-Liquid Downflow: A Study of Transition to Wavy Flow

“…The gravitational waves observed in Region I, when tap water is used, disappear when a small quantity of the surfactant Tween R is added to the water. This observation is in agreement with the remarks of Spedding and Hand [11], who report that the small amplitude gravitational waves on the liquid surface are suppressed due to the addition of the surfactant. Region II is observed for all the liquids employed.…”

“…Spedding and Hand [11] and Soleimani et al [12] have also observed that the addition of very small quantities of polymers in water results in both a significant increase of the liquid hold up (up to 30% compared to that of pure water) and the reduction of the wave amplitude (i.e., h rms ), despite the reduced surface tension. Several researchers [11,12] attribute this fact either to an increased surface viscosity or to the turbulence damping at the liquid in- terface. In summary, the smooth-to-wavy flow transition Re L for the surfactant solution is smaller than that for the water and glycerin solutions.…”

“…However, studies concerning the flow structure under the wavy interface in thin liquid layers in inclined pipes do not seem to be available in the literature, most likely due to the difficulty in obtaining accurate velocity measurements inside such thin liquid layers. Several investigators [4,[10][11][12] have reported on the effect of liquid properties on the flow patterns in co-current pipe flow, but no experimental data concerning gas-viscous liquid and gas-low surface tension liquid flows in inclined pipes are available.…”

Going against the flow—A review of non-additive means of drag reduction

“…Polymers were utilized in many occasions as DRAs in gas-liquid and liquid-liquid flow systems [52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59]. Compared to polymer DRAs, surfactant DRAs attracted less attention and have been mainly applied in gas-liquid flow systems [60][61][62][63]. Al-Sarkhi and Soleimani [64], investigated the effect of applying polymeric DRA in gas-liquid system flowing through horizontal pipelines.…”

Liquid layer characteristics in gas–liquid flow in slightly inclined pipes: Effect of non-ionic surfactant additives

“…Spedding and Hand (1997) in a review paper summarized the studies that examine the effect of surfactant additives on two-phase pipe-flow. Wilkens and Thomas (2007) performed two-phase pressure drop measurements for air/water mixtures in a 0.052 m diameter horizontal pipe and they found that the addition of 400 ppm of SDS to the water reduced the pressure drop by 25-40% compared to the same flow rates of water.…”