The Martí i Franquès COFUND Fellowship attends the 16th Multiphase Flow Conference in Dresden, Germany

The 16^th Multiphase Flow Conference is taking place in Helmoltz-Zentrum Dresden Rossendorf (Germany) from November 13 to 16, 2018. The goals of the conference are to discuss the state of the art in multiphase flow research and applications, and to foster discussion and exchange of knowledge. Experts from the experimental side, from modelling and simulation, as well as experts from the application field are presenting their research and results to a worldwide audience.

It is in this context that Sassi has presented the paper “Design of an Experimental Facility to analyse multi-phase flows in pipeliness”. In this study, an experimental facility designed to analyze G/L/S mixtures is presented and discussed. Experimental results are presented for gas-liquid flows in horizontal and vertical 30mm ID pipelines. The mixture involved is composed of air and water. The superficial velocity of the slurry phase is in the range of 0 to 2 m/s and the air from 0 to 20 m/s. Measurements of pressure loss, hold-up, superficial velocities and flow regimes are reported. A flow map is presented covering the specified ranges, and two-phase correlations for hold-up and frictional pressure loss are derived and compared with available experimental data in the literature.

Paolo Sassi belongs to the ECoMMFiT research group of the URV and he is part of the  Programme Martí Franquès Cofund which is jointly funded by the European Union. His PhD thesis analyses three-phase flows, where the gas, liquid and solid phases coexist in pipelines and accessories. The dynamics of three-phase flows involves phenomena of high complexity whose characterization is of great interest for diverse sectors of the worldwide industry: in the petroleum industry, from the production stages of oil and gas through the different phases of refinement up to the production of petroleum products, for biomass transport, in chemical reactors, nuclear waste decommissioning, pulp and paper production, in many applications of air injections, among many others.