Stratified three phase flow in pipes

The simultaneous flow of water, oil and gas is of practical importance for the oil and gas industry. Many oil and gas pipelines contain these three phases with varying degrees of concentration, depending on the particular situation. In this work the gas/oil/water holdups for stratified three phase flow are calculated. This information is usually the first step for analyzing the stability of stratified flow and for developing transition criteria. It is shown that one can obtain three theoretical steady state configurations for stratified flow, but only the configuration with the thinnest total liquid layer is stable and can actually occur. Taitel & Dukler (AIChE Jl22, 47-55, 1976) criterion for transition from stratified flow was applied to the three phase flow case and was found to yield good agreement for flow gas flow rates.