Modeling of radial gas fraction profiles for bubble flow in vertical pipes

The paper presents a method for the prediction of radial gas fraction profiles from a given bubble size distribution. The method is based on the assumption of the equilibrium of the forces acting on a bubble perpendicularly to the flow direction. Assuming a large number of bubble size classes radial distributions are calculated separately for all bubble classes. The sum of these distributions is the radial profile of the gas fraction. The results of the model are compared with experimental data for a number of gas and liquid volume flow rates. The experiments were performed at a vertical test loop (inner diameter 50 mm) in FZ-Rossendorf using a wire mesh sensor. The sensor enables the determination of void distributions in the cross section of the loop. A special evaluation procedure supplies bubble size distributions as well as local distributions of bubbles within a predefined interval of bubble sizes. There is a good agreement between experimental and calculated data. In particular the change from wall peaking to core peaking is well predicted. (authors)