CFD Studies on the gas-liquid flow in the swirl generating device

In this work, CFD simulations using the Euler-Euler approach were performed to model the gas-liquid flow in a swirl-generating device. The computational work was based on experiments, which are conducted in a vertical pipe packed with a static swirl element. Measurements of gas volume fractions at several planes within the swirl element were taken using high-resolution gamma-ray computed tomography (HireCT).
The simulations were carried out for the experimental conditions with defined inlet gas volumetric flow rates of 5 and 10 %. The profile of several key parameters (e.g pressure, liquid and gas velocities and gas fraction) are used to understand the flow behavior inside the device. The radial gas phase distribution obtained from the simulations assuming different mono-disperse and bi-modal bubble sizes is compared against the experimental results. The significant influence of the selected bubble sizes on the profile is shown and discussed within this paper. In general, the radial profile of gas fraction is well captured by the CFD simulations except in the transition zone where a significant discrepancy to the experiment is observed.