Abstract
This paper describes a fundamental study of effects of phase-change on water-steam flow through a porous medium. The experiments are carried out by using a packed glass beads bed submerged horizontally in a thermostat kept the temperature higher than 373K. The experimental results are compared with the calcu-lation based on a one-dimensional two-phase model which has a new fitting parameter C in the empirical equation relating the relative permeability for a non-wetting phase to the saturation. The parameter C indicates a critical point at which a wetting phase starts to obstruct a non-wetting phase flow through domi-native paths in a porous medium. The conclusions are as follows: (1) There exists 'Jamin effect' in the water-steam flow with phase-change, which is an obstructive effect of gas bubble on the gas and liquid flows through a porous medium.(2) The relative permeability curve of non-wetting phase, including the new fitting parameter C, almost agrees with the relationship between water saturation and the relative permeability of gas proposed experi-mentally by Wyckoff et al. (1936).(3) The proposed mathematical model describes water-steam flow with phase-change in the region of which the steam ratio is smaller than 0.6.
