Gas-liquid two-phase flow equal division using a swirling flow distributor

A novel distributor is proposed to distribute gas-liquid two-phase flow equally, which mainly consists of a main pipe, a swirl vane, two nozzles and two side arms. The swirl vane is adopted to transform upstream asymmetric flow patterns into uniform annular flow and ensure both nozzles have identical inlet condition. The nozzles are used to ensure the two side arms have similar resistance characteristics. Both nozzles have the same size with the throat diameter of 8.0 mm. Experiments were conducted in an air-water two-phase flow loop. The ranges of gas and liquid superficial velocity were 7.5-20.0 m/s and 0.013-0.16 m/s. The flow patterns observed during the experiments included wavy flow, slug flow and annular flow. The results demonstrate that equal distribution can be achieved and the fractions of gas and liquid taken off are independent of gas and liquid superficial velocities, flow patterns and nozzles' position.