| Two-phase flow occurs in a wide range of industrial plants, boilers, nuclear reactors, oil and gas production, and other processes. The requirement for economical designs, optimized operating conditions, and safety factor assessment leads to the need for quantitative information on two-phase flow. Increases in yield, competition in capital and operating expenditures, and the importance of reliability and safety have further emphasized this need in the last few years. Examples such as steam flood operations in enhanced oil recovery and steam distribution networks in the chemical and petrochemical plants highlight the importance of the study of the two-phase flow phenomenon.; Accurate two-phase flow measurement with simple instrumentation has been an important, yet unresolved issue. Although attempts have been made to measure mass flow of the two existing phases using a variety of primary elements, inexpensive and accurate procedures are not currently available.; Due to the inaccuracies associated with applying the single phase equation to two-phase flow, the use of a correlation is absolutely essential for accurate measurement of the two phase-fluid flow through sharp edge orifice meters. Actual mass flow rate of two-phase fluids through differential type primary devices such as an orifice meter can be predicted by using a two-phase correlation.; In this research, a complete testing facility was designed, constructed, and tested. Furthermore, several existing two-phase correlations are identified. Using the experimental apparatus, a large amount of experimental data with varying qualities(vapor fraction of fluid) between 14 to 100 percent were gathered and analyzed for two-phase steam flow measurement. Using a relatively uncomplicated model for flow of the two-phase steam through the orifice meter, a novel and fully mathematical correlation is developed. Unlike the available correlations, the proposed correlation does not require experimentally determined constants. It is not empirical but based entirely on the physical properties such as quality(X), viscosity({dollar}mu{dollar}), and density({dollar}rho{dollar}) of the flowing fluids. The experimental results obtained are in agreement with the proposed two-phase correlations' result regardless of the operating pressure and the beta ratio(ratio of the orifice to the pipe diameter). |
