Foam generation, characterization and breakup in pipes

Three different flow patterns were observed in the pipe, namely, stratified, dispersed and slug flow, exhibiting different foam quality. Foam flow in pipes experiments revealed that the gas shear effect on foam break-up depends on the existing flow pattern in the pipe. For stratified wavy flow, increasing the superficial gas velocity can lead to either increasing or decreasing foam breakup efficiency, which depends on the gas velocity. On the other hand, in slug flow, generally increasing the superficial gas velocity results in slightly decrease in the foam breakup efficiency.