Experimental investigation of phase split of gas-liquid swirling flow through a multi-slot sampler

A special sampler is proposed to extract a fraction of fluid from the main stream of gas-liquid two-phase flow. Four rectangular slots (2mm × 110 mm) were arranged along the circumference of the pipe wall, and a moving plate is used to adjust the fraction of taken off. Experiments were conducted in an air-water two-phase flow loop and the flow patterns tested were: wavy, slug and annular flow. Experimental results show that, on contrary to the phase split behavior of conventional horizontal T-Junction, the liquid preferentially enters the sample slots. Phase split is affected by the gas and liquid superficial velocities, slot length ratio (Ls/Lm) and pressure difference ratio between the sample slot and main slot (ΔP3/ΔP2). In case of Ls/Le equaling to 0.046, the fraction of liquid taken off can even exceed 0.4 due to much higher pressure difference of the sample slots compared with that of the main slots.