Experimental study of the wave characteristics in annular gas-liquid flow along the wide side of a rectangular microchannel

Kutateladze Institute of Thermophysics SB RAS, 630090 Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

^* Corresponding author: germanbartkus@gmail.com

Abstract

The characteristics of gas-liquid annular flow in a microchannel with a rectangular cross-section were experimentally studied for the flow of a mixture of viscous silicone oil PMS 200 - nitrogen. To form the required annular flow regime, a side T-mixer was used at the microchannel inlet. High-speed visualization allowed to register flow areas of menisci and waves at the gas-liquid interface, located on short and wide microchannel sides for the given range of superficial gas and liquid velocities J_gas=24.3-93.8 m/s, J_liq=0.01 m/s. The processing of the flow images was performed using the Python program and areas, which are covered by various size waves on the microchannel wide side between the menisci, were identified and summarized. The dependence of the dimensionless wave area on Regas was obtained and compared with the dynamics of liquid layer thickness for the flow of the PMS200-nitrogen mixture, which was obtained previously.