Experimental study on the effect of diameter on gas–liquid CCFL characteristics of horizontal circular pipes

Abstract The gas–liquid two-phase countercurrent flow in horizontal pipes is closely related to the safe operation of marine diesel engines with underwater exhausts, and nuclear power plants with pressurized water reactors. A visualization experiment on the effect of the diameter size on the counter current flow limitation (CCFL) characteristics of horizontal pipes was performed in the diameter range of 20–130 mm using air and water as the two phases. The results indicate that with a certain gas flow rate, the flow rate of the backflow liquid significantly increases with increasing diameter. Wallis models and those using the Froude–Ohnesorge numbers can correlate the effect of the change in diameter size when the diameters are greater than 100 mm, whereas they lose normalization capability with diameters less than 100 mm. From an analysis of the physical mechanism of formation of this diameter effect, a novel correlation model based on a new dimensionless group for each phase, consisting of the dimensionless inertia and dimensionless viscous force, was proposed for predicting the CCFL characteristics of small diameter pipes. Meanwhile, another correlation based on the Wallis model was also advanced for predicting the CCFL characteristics of large diameter pipes.