A CFD STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF VENTURI GEOMETRY ON WET GAS CORRELATIONS

Differential pressure meters are increasingly being used as wet gas flow meters because of their simple construction and ease of operation. But their performance in single phase gas itself is very different from that of water (Jamieson et al, 1996 and van Weers et al, 1998). One way of improving the performance in high pressure gas is to change the design of the venturi tube (Reader-Harris et al, 2001). In wet gas flow, the presence of even a small amount of liquid increases the pressure differential many fold resulting in over reading (OR). It is imperative that the meter reading has to be corrected for the accurate wet gas flow measurement. Semi-empirical correlations are used for this purpose and get a modified flow rate. But, the accuracy of the modified flow rate depends on the robustness of the correlation. In this work, the performance of eight wet gas correlation is examined in twenty seven different designs of venturi meter using CFD. The effects of diameter, diameter ratio and convergent angle are studied.