Critical air/water blow-downs in safety valves for qualities from 0.01 to 0.113 and mass flow rates from 1.5 up to 4.3 kg/s have been observed in our test facility. These critical blow-downs are characterized by a large void fraction and by an intense mixing of the phases both in the valve body and in the outlet pipe. A qualitative estimation of the flow pattern in the outlet pipe using the map of Taitel and Dukler suggests that these air/water flows are intermittent flows - presumably slug flows - evolving to annular flows for qualities above 0.1. Intermittent flows are also predicted for critical air/water and air/glycerine flows taken from the literature for the same safety valve at slightly larger relieving pressures. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.