CFD study on the flow in various swirl generating devices

This work is a preliminary study to develop an effective and efficient experimental facility on the gas-liquid flow in the swirl generating device. The flow in a vertical pipe packed with three different swirl elements: coil, single helical tape and double helical tape were studied using the single phase Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. The selection of the swirl element which will be used in the further study was made based on the observation in the velocity streamlines and the contour of the swirling strength in the plane located at a certain distance downstream the swirl elements. Based on those parameters, the double helical tape was selected due to its ability to generate a stronger swirling flow which will be beneficial for the separation of gas and liquid in an inline separator. © 2019 IEEE.