Droplet breakage is a common phenomenon in converting a pipe flow to a swirl flow in a vane-type pipe separator (VTPS)’ inlet. The evaluation of the dispersed droplet sizes after breakage is crucial to the optimum design of the inlet structure and the estimation of the oil-water separation performance. This paper studies the droplet behavior in a swirl flow produced by guiding vanes. Experiments are performed with two different guiding vanes at the inlet of the VTPS. The sizes of the produced oil droplets at the downstream of the guiding vanes are measured in situ using a Malvern Insitec SX. The results indicate that the streamlined deflector is superior to the semi-elliptical plate for the VTPS’ optimization based on the comparison of the droplet sizes in their respective induced swirl flow fields, which can be explained by a modified T-model. Our study suggests that the use of the modified T-model is a reliable method to optimize the design of the guiding vane in the swirling generating stage.

在叶片式管道分离器（VTPS）的入口中，将管道流转换为旋流时，液滴破裂是常见现象。破损后分散液滴尺寸的评估对于入口结构的最佳设计和油水分离性能的评估至关重要。本文研究了由导向叶片产生的旋流中的液滴行为。在VTPS的入口处使用两个不同的导向叶片进行了实验。在导向叶片的下游产生的油滴的尺寸被测量原位使用Malvern Insitec SX。结果表明，基于液滴各自诱导涡流场中液滴尺寸的比较，流线形偏转器优于VTPS优化的半椭圆板，这可以用改进的T模型来解释。我们的研究表明，使用改进的T模型是在旋流产生阶段优化导向叶片设计的可靠方法。