CFD MODELLING OF BUBBLY FLOW IN ADIABATIC UPWARD PIPE USING A SOLVER BASED ON OPENFOAM® WITH THE QUADRATURE METHOD OF MOMENTS

An Eulerian-Eulerian approach was used to model adiabatic bubbly flow with CFD techniques. The OpenFOAM (R) solver twoPhaseEulerFoam was modified to predict upward bubbly flow in vertical pipes. Interfacial force and bubble induced turbulence models are studied and implemented. The population balance equation included in the two-fluid model is solved to simulate a polydisperse flow with the quadrature method of moments approximation. Two-phase flow experiments with different superficial velocities of gas and water at different temperatures are used to validate the solver. Radial distributions of void fraction, air and water velocities, Sauter mean diameter and turbulence intensity are compared with the computational results. The computational results agree well with the experiments showing the capability of the solver to predict two-phase flow characteristics.