Experimental investigation of gas-liquid separation with a new combined impacting junction

The main objective of this investigation was to design and test a simple device capable of gas-liquid separation over a wide range of inlet conditions. A novel system of combined impacting tee junctions was designed and built for this purpose. The system consisted of three horizontal and four vertical, equal-sided impacting tee junctions of internal diameter 13.5 mm, having a single (horizontal) inlet and two vertical (top and bottom) outlets. Two sets of experiments were conducted. The experiments were performed with air-water mixtures at a nominal inlet pressure of 200 kPa (abs) and ambient temperature. The limiting conditions of inlet gas and liquid superficial velocities (JG1 and JL1, respectively) for full-phase separation were determined experimentally. It was found that with the present system, the limiting conditions (gas and liquid inlet superficial velocities) for full-phase separation are almost double those of a system of three impacting junctions and quadruple those of a single impacting tee junction. Outside the region of full-phase separation, the phase-separation effectiveness of the combined junction system relative to other systems proposed in the literature was investigated. It was found that the present system produces higher phase-separation effectiveness when compared to other combined junctions.

Automated summary

The study aimed to design and test a simple device for gas-liquid separation under various inlet conditions. Experimental results showed that the novel system demonstrated higher phase-separation effectiveness compared to other systems proposed in literature.