Experimental Characterisation of Gas-Liquid Flows through a Gate Valve

Sizing a valve or a fitting in single-phase flow is an easy to do operation. In two-phase flow, however, more complex flowing conditions occur and attention must be paid when selecting the model to predict pressure losses. Some special types of valves are also used in industrial plant for regulation purposes and flow control. In this case is important to have a reliable model to predict the flow rate through the valve in order to operate adequately on the valve actuator to control flow conditions. Different types of valve are used with this purpose: gate valves, globe valves, orifice valves, etc. In previous works a special type of valve used in the petroleum industry has been studied: the choke valve. It could be classified as an angle valve, apart from the fact that the flow follows a reverse path (it is first diverted, then it passes through a restriction) This paper presents the experimental characterisation study of a gate valve of 2” nominal diameter and the comparison with the previous studies on MOV. The aim of the study was to investigate the flow through this type of valve, to understand the phenomena that occur inside it and to improve a model to calculate pressure drops in two-phase flow conditions. A comparison with models available in literature is also presented.