Water film thickness measurement system for oil-water pipe flow

A new technique development for high spatial and temporal resolution film-thickness measurement in oil-water flow is presented in this work. A capacitance measurement system is proposed to measure thin water films or local water fractions near to the pipe wall. The measurement system is based in a planar sensor which is flexible and can be placed close to and following the curvature of the inner wall of the tube. Experimental results of the capacitive technique showed that the system is able to measure film thickness between 400 μm and 2200 μm. Dispersed and core-annular flows were studied in a vertical 12-m-height glass pipe with 50.8 mm of internal diameter, using mineral oil (860 kg/m3 of density and 220 mPa s of viscosity) and tap water. Local time-domain signals and axial and circumferential distributions of water film thickness near to the pipe wall and 3-D images of water film are presented. The measured film thickness, obtained by the proposed technique, was compared with that obtained through a camera-based imaging technique and the agreement was good, with a deviation less than 20%. The new technique allows the observation and characterization of average interfacial topologies in separated flows, and high frequency phenomena related to dispersed flows that occur in liquid-liquid flow near the pipe wall.