An experimental study of pressure drop characteristics in vertical upward two phase and three phase flows

Abstract

The flow of multiphase mixture is encountered in numerous industrial, energy transfer process and especially in oil and gas transportation sector. Transportation of multiphase oil and gas mixture form wellbore to onshore production facility has many issues associated with it. One of the main issues associated with multiphase transportation is pressure drop. In this current work, a small scale three phase test loop was designed and constructed. The test loop is capable of conducting two phase (liquid-liquid) and three phase (liquid-liquid-gas) pressure drop measurement in vertical pipe. The two phase pressure drop experiment was conducted focusing on the phase inversion phenomenon. The three phase pressure drop experiment was conducted in slug flow and churn flow regimes and the effects of gas superficial velocity on the components of pressure drop (frictional and hydrostatic) was examined. Flow visualization technique using high-speed camera is used for identification of flow regime and to deduce essential information such as slug length, bubble rise velocity and slug frequency. Rheological characterization of emulsion sample for different oil concentration was performed using HAAKE MARS III Rheometer