Development of a pressure drop model for Taylor flow in a narrow channels

In small channels, slug flow often occurs in the form of Taylor flow. In this flow pattern, elongated bullet-shaped gas bubbles that almost fill the channel cross-section (Taylor bubbles) are seperated by liquid slugs wbich are free from gas entrainment. Taylor flow is attractive for multiphase micro process engineering because the high interfacial area per unit volume and the thin liquid film allow for very efficient gas/liquid and gas/liquid/solid heat and mass transfer.An important parameter of multiphase microreactors operated in Taylor flow is the Pressure drop. Pressure drop models from literature such as the widely used Lockhart-Martinelli-Chisholm model have defiencies because they do not incorporate the effect of surface tension (which is essential in small dimensions). Other models account for the influence of surface tension but are semi-empirical and lack on physical interpretation and/or rely on the Taylor bubble velocity which is not known a priori for given gas and liquid flow rates . In this contribution a mechanistic pressure drop model for Taylor flow is proposed. The development of the model is based on results of detailed numerical simulations performed by a VOF method with interface reconstruction. The new model allows estimating the pressure drop along a Taylor flow unit cell (which consists of one gas bubble and one liquid slug) from the (given) physical properties and flow rates of the phases only.