CFD modeling of all gas–liquid and vapor–liquid flow regimes predicted by the Baker chart

Calculated gas/vapor–liquid two-phase co-current horizontal flow regimes are compared with experimental data, taken from the Baker chart. For the calculation of the two-phase flow regimes, use is made of the well-known volume of fluid (VOF) multiphase flow model that uses a piecewise linear interface calculation (PLIC) interface reconstruction method in each computational cell, implemented in a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code.The flow regimes for water–air flow are reproduced. All simulations give good agreement with the flow regimes expected from the Baker chart. Horizontal flow regimes for two-phase liquid–vapor gasoil flow are also reproduced. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the flow regimes for gasoil liquid–vapor flow as predicted by the Baker chart are simulated. Again, a good agreement between the simulated and expected flow regime is obtained. All horizontal flow regimes appearing in the Baker chart can thus be calculated using CFD.