A two-fluid model in the Eulerian-Eulerian framework has been implemented for the turbulent gas-liquid bubbly upward flow in a vertical pipe. The transport equations, i.e. Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations for the two-fluid model, are discretized using the finite volume method. The effect of the disperse gas phase on the liquid phase turbulence, referred to as turbulence modulation, was accounted for through source terms in the transport equations for a low Reynolds number k - epsilon turbulence closure. The model was used to predict the turbulence kinetic energy and its dissipation rate, mean phasic velocities and volume fraction distribution for a set of test cases selected from the available literature. The focus of the present study was on assessing the model predictions using measurements of the turbulence kinetic energy of the liquid phase. A relatively novel aspect of the present analysis is the use of the budgets of the transport equations for the turbulence kinetic energy and dissipation rate to assess the effect of the turbulence modulation on the liquid turbulence field. Although the present model formulation is shown to adequately predict the effect of bubbles in some flows and perform better than some of the other model formulations, the overall conclusion is that the present approaches for incorporating turbulence modulation are at best partially successful and still need further development. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.