Flow Regimes Characteristics of Water-crude Oil in a Rectangular Y-microchannel

The paper deals with the investigation of the flow regimes of water and crude oil in a Y-microchannel. Systematic experiments allow distinguishing four different types of water-oil flow regimes in studied microchannel, namely, plug regime, droplet regime, parallel regime, and the first-revealed chaotic regime, as well as defining the ranges of parameters corresponding to these regimes. The dependences of the water plug length and frequency of their formation in crude oil on various parameters are obtained, and universal correlations are derived. It was demonstrated that when determining the dimensionless plug lengths and the Strouhal number corresponding to droplet detachment, it is necessary to take into account not only the ratio of the dispersed and carrier phase flow rates but also the capillary number. The systematic numerical simulation of the considered flows is conducted using the VOF method. The conducted comparison of the computation and experimental results has shown that the numerical simulation qualitatively correctly predicts the characteristics of water and oil flows in the Y-type channel under consideration.