A mechanics approach for wet gas flow metering, theory and application to flow loop tests

New technology combined to the rise of the barrel price make wet gas flow metering of primary importance. A Venturi and a multienergy gamma ray hold-up meter provide capital information to estimate gas and liquid flow rates with the required metering accuracy. Starting from Navier–Stokes’ equations, the two-phase flow is modeled with a three 1D equations system for gas, liquid droplets and liquid film. Hypotheses are added to reduce the dynamical system to a simplified and operational two scalar equation model. Based on this physical description of the film-core flow, this new model is tested over experimental data. Finally, three remaining coefficients are calibrated and modeled thanks to empirical correlation with non-dimensional numbers.