Two-phase pressure drop prediction in wet gas flow through V-Cone meter

The pressure drop is considerably significant for the differential pressure meter to measure the flow rate of the two-phase flow. Little is known about the pressure drop characteristics of the V-Cone meter when it is used to measure the wet gas flow. The objective of this paper is to investigate the two-phase pressure drop of the V-Cone meter and develop a correlation for predicting its pressure drop. A V-Cone meter with the equivalent diameter ratio of 0.55 was investigated experimentally. The experimental fluid was air and water. The test pressure ranged from 0.1 MPa to 0.4 MPa, and the gas and liquid mass flow rate ranged from 100 Nm3/h to 500 Nm³/h and from 0.05 m³/h to 2.2 m³/h, respectively. The experimental results showed that the existing correlations, which are developed for the orifice plate meter and the Venturi meter, are not applicable for the V-Cone meter to predict the pressure drop. The two-phase mass flow coefficient, K, was used to develop the two-phase pressure drop correlation. The influences of the Lockhart-Martinelli parameter, the gas densiometric Froude number and the operating pressure on K were investigated. The new pressure drop correlation can accurately predict the pressure drop of the V-Cone meter for the wet gas. The relative error of the pressure drop is less than ± 9.0% at the 95.1% confidence level and the average relative error is 3.88%. The pressure drop prediction correlation provides a reference for developing the correlation of the wet gas measurement.