Liquid holdup in horizontal two-phase gas—liquid flow

The purpose of this study was to simplify and improve the mechanistic model developed by Taitel and Dukler (1976) for estimating the liquid holdup in horizontal two-phase flow. An experimental study was first conducted to develop a data bank used for evaluation and improvement. The holdup data were obtained using an air-kerosene mixture flowed through a test section consisting of a horizontal pipe 2-in (50.8 mm) in diameter and 118 ft (36 m) long. The liquid holdup ranged from 0.009 to 0.61 and the flow patterns observed were stratified, slug and annular. shown that the Taitel-Dukler model, which consists of several equations and requires an iterative method to solve, can be accurately represented by a single explicit equation. on the measured data, it was found that Taitel-Dukler model tends to overestimate liquid holdup for stratified wavy, slug and annular flow patterns, whereas it tends to underestimate the liquid holdup for stratified smooth flow. An empirical modification, therefore, is proposed which results in a significant improvement in predictions compared to experimental data. on statistical results, it is observed that the proposed model gives excellent results and clearly outperforms the original model and all the existing correlations when tested against the present data (89 points) and against data from the literature (111 points).