Drag Reduction of Gas-Liquid Two-Phase Flow in Steel Pipes with Different Inclination Geometry

It is significant to make researches on drag reduction in two-phase transport pipeline because two-phase flow has high energy dissipation. API X 52 steel pipe with diameter of 40mm is used in this paper to simulate pipeline with different inclination geometry including horizontal, up-inclined and vertical sections. The up-inclined section has an inclination angle of eight degree. Experiments and theoretical analysis are carried out to study the drag reduction characteristics of gas-liquid two-phase flow in these three sections. The drag reducing agents used here is polyacrylamide. It is found that two-phase drag reduction varies with pipe inclination geometry. The largest drag reduction efficiency occurs in horizontal pipes and which is up to seventy percent. Drag reduction efficiency in up-inclined section is up to sixty percent. Drag reduction in vertical section is the lowest and which can be up to about thirty percent. A mechanistic drag reduction model is proposed to predict drag reduction in gas-liquid two-phase flow. The results predicted are in good agreement with the experiment data.