A comparison of correlations used for Venturi wet gas metering in oil and gas industry

Wet gas metering is becoming more and more important for the oil and gas industry, and the Venturi meter is a favorable device for the metering of unprocessed wet natural gas production flows. As we known that the Venturi meter used in wet gas gives the higher measured differential pressure reading than in single gas phase flow, which is called over-reading. In this study, we evaluated eight correlations which are commonly used in high pressure and high Lockhart–Maretinelli parameter, and the performance of the eight correlations under low pressure and low Lockhart–Maretinelli parameter was discussed. Three Venturi meters of 50 mm diameter have been tested in Tianjin University's multiphase flow loop. The Venturi meters, with diameter ratio values of 0.4048, 0.55 and 0.70, have been tested at the working operation pressure of 0.15 MPa, 0.20 MPa, 0.25 MPa and the gas Froude number from 0.6 to 2.0, and the modified Lockhart–Maretinelli parameter from 0.0022 to 0.06, and the ratio of the gas to total mass flowrate from 0.5 to 0.99. Finally, effects of Lockhart–Maretinelli parameter, pressure, gas Froude number and diameter ratio to these correlations are analyzed with new independent data.