Backlight imaging tomography for slug flows in straight and helical tubes

Backlight imaging tomography is used to experimentally investigate interfacial structures of gas–liquid two-phase flow in circular tubes. The tomography method is based on the attenuation of visible light that causes the inside of the liquid phases to be colored with dye. Increasing the number of light projections provides accurate phase distributions to be reconstructed by a linear backward projection scheme. After the reconstruction performance is examined with numerical simulations for several test cases, the method is applied to slug flows that have complicated 3D interfaces from turbulence. Interfacial structures are compared between straight and helical tubes to determine the effect of centrifugal acceleration. The result demonstrates that centrifugal acceleration provides a liquid-clinging layer on the inner wall against gravity while a high-speed collision of liquid with the top wall happens in a straight tube.     

Imaging stratifying liquid–liquid flow by capacitance tomography

Electrical capacitance tomography offers a non-intrusive technique for on-line visualisation of two-phase liquid–liquid flows. It has been applied on a facility which provides metered flows of water and kerosene to a test section at the start of which they pass through a dispersing multi-hole orifice plate. The test section consists of a sudden expansion with an internal diameter of 63 mm inlet and 100 mm outlet and which can be inclined. Beyond this the mixture is separated into the two constituents and returned to their individual tanks. Tomography measurements were made using a PTL-300 electronic system coupled to a 12-electrode sensor which was built in-house. The sensor is fitted on the outside of one of the plastic pipe lengths of the test section. By varying the input oil fractions from 20% to 70%, using mixture velocities of 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4 m/s and positioning the pipe at angles of +6,+3,0, −4 and −7 to the horizontal, different flow patterns were established in the test section. A specially developed calibration method is used in all experiments and tomographic images of the stratifying liquid–liquid flow were obtained. These images show clearly that the spatial distribution in a pipe cross-section is strongly dependent on the mixture velocity and the distance from expansion in the range studied. Concave interfaces were observed in horizontal and downward inclination flow for all cases while convex interfaces were identified only in an upward inclination flow at the high input oil fractions and high mixture velocities. This application illustrates very clearly the capability of the ECT for on-line imaging of liquid–liquid two-phase flows.     

Simple installation for measurement of two-phase gas–liquid flow by means of conventional single-phase flowmeters

The paper describes a method of measuring the flow rate of the components of a two-phase gas–liquid mixture. The proposed method ensures the separation of two phases using a rather simple modification of pipeline configuration than using separating vessels to achieve this aim. The two components can then be measured using conventional single-phase flowmeters. The errors of the separating and metering installation are about ±(3–4)% in the flow rate range 3:1.     

Dynamic flow behavior measurements in gas–solid fluidized beds using different non-intrusive techniques and polyethylene powder

Pressure fluctuations and X-ray computed tomography (CT) measurements were utilized to characterize the flow behavior of gas–solid fluidized beds using polyethylene particles in three Plexiglas columns with diameters of 10, 20, and 30 cm. Air was used as the gas phase. The gas–solid flow dynamic under ambient conditions was characterized from statistical analysis of pressure fluctuation data and CT images. The time-averaged voidage distribution, bubble-phase area fraction, bubble diameter and bubble number distribution varying with the bed heights were extracted from all the three columns. The bed scales had significant effect on the hydrodynamics. The scale-up effects on the gas–solid two-phase flow behavior were discussed.     

Cross-sectional void fraction distribution measurements in a vertical annulus two-phase flow by high speed X-ray computed tomography and real-time neutron radiography techniques

A real-time neutron radiography (RTNR) system and a high speed X-ray computed tomography (X-CT) system are compared for measurement of two-phase flow. Each system is used to determine the flow regime, and the void fraction distribution in a vertical annulus flow channel with particular attention on the temporal resolution of the systems and the time behaviour of the two-phase flow. The annulus flow channel is operated as a bubble column and measurements obtained for gas flow rates from 0.0 to 30.0 l/min. Both the RTNR and the X-CT systems show that the two-dimensional void fraction distribution can be obtained. The X-CT system is shown to have a superior temporal resolution capable of resolving the void fraction distribution in an (r,θ) plane in 4.0 ms. The RTNR system is shown to obtain void fraction distribution in a (r,z) plane in 33.0 ms. Void fraction distribution for bubbly flow and slug flow is determined.     

Ultrasonic detection of moving interfaces in gas–liquid two-phase flow

Ultrasound reflects strongly off the gas–liquid interface when there is a large change in acoustic impedance. We exploit this phenomenon to detect the instantaneous position of the interface from the time of flight of pulsed ultrasound. Because the characteristics of the reflected wave depend on the shape and size of the interface relative to the ultrasound wavelength, the single-sensing principle is insufficient to capture the interface for generalized gas–liquid two-phase flows. In the present study, we design and examine three types of ultrasound interface detection techniques: the echo intensity technique, the local Doppler technique, and the velocity-variance technique, and investigate and compare the merits and limitations of each. The results indicate that the echo intensity technique is appropriate for turbulent interfaces that cause ultrasound scattering over wide angles. In contrast, the local Doppler technique is required to capture information from waves reflected from smooth interfaces and bubbles. Finally, we find that the velocity-variance technique works for quasi-steady and periodical two-phase flow, and we apply this technique to horizontal slug flow in a tube.     

Heating of TEM specimens during ion milling

Sample heating during preparation of electron-thin specimens for observation in transmission electron microscopy (TEM) can produce artefacts which invalidate observations. This is particularly true of two-phase materials such as metal matrix composites, for which sample cooling with liquid nitrogen cannot be used to preserve the substructure during milling. A series of experiments is conducted using an age-hardenable aluminium alloy which produces a trace of peak temperature attained by TEM specimens during ion milling. It is shown that peak temperatures of the order of 650 K can be attained using conventional milling parameters; the technique must therefore be used with caution with materials such as metal matrix composites. A simplified one-dimensional heat transfer analysis of the problem is conducted to show that the most critical parameter is heat transfer along the sample holder legs and across interfaces along the heat path. Temperature differentials within the TEM specimen are shown to be less significant, yet these alone are capable of reaching 60 K within a dimpled specimen under usual milling conditions.     

Measurement of the surrounding liquid motion of a single rising bubble using a Dual-Camera PIV system

A new type of Particle Image Velocimetry technique, called “Dual-Camera PIV System”, was developed in order to achieve higher-accuracy measurement at a high time resolution. It is very difficult to measure precisely a complex flow field such as a gas–liquid two phase flow using PIV, because of the existence of a strong turbulence. In the conventional dynamic PIV, a time interval of two images required for analysis depends basically on a camera frame rate. A time interval of a set of PIV images affects the measurement accuracy significantly. Therefore, it is necessary to shorten the time interval of a set of PIV images as well as to achieve high frame rates. For this specific purpose, we developed a measurement system composed of two high speed cameras. The interval of two images obtained from each camera was controlled arbitrarily. Furthermore, a recursive cross-correlation method was adopted as PIV algorithm in order to achieve high spatial resolution. The interrogation areas were determined from the number density of PIV particles. The developed system was evaluated by cross-correlation coefficient and signal–noise (S/N) ratio. As the demonstration, the surrounding liquid motion in the vicinity of a single rising bubble was measured via this measurement system.     

Preparation of TEM samples of metal–oxide interface by the focused ion beam technique

This paper describes a procedure to prepare metal–oxide interfaces for transmission electron microscopy by the focused ion beam technique. The advantage of this procedure is to allow the observation of metal–oxide interfaces of irradiated samples with a homogeneous thickness without the need to have an instrument inside laboratories that are specialized for the manipulation of irradiated materials. A transmission electron microscopy sample is prepared by this method and analysed.     

毛细管电泳-质谱联用技术及其在药物和生物分析中的应用

毛细管电泳-质谱（CE-MS）联用技术是在液相色谱-质谱联用技术基础上发展起来的一项新型分析技术,它结合了毛细管电泳具有的分离效率高、分离速度快、样品消耗量少以及质谱检测具有的高灵敏度和强结构解析能力等优点,现已成为倍受分析化学工作者关注的新型微量分析技术。目前,CE-MS联用技术是中药有效成分分析,体内药物分析以及生物样品,如氨基酸、多肽、蛋白质和多糖等分析的重要手段。本文对CE-MS联用技术中同轴鞘流及无鞘流纳流电喷雾等几种接口装置的研究进展,CE-MS技术在中药活性成分分析及多级质谱结构解析以及氨基酸、多肽及蛋白质等生物样品分析中的应用研究进行了综述,并对该技术的发展进行了展望。     

A nonlinear fuzzy assisted image reconstruction algorithm for electrical capacitance tomography

A nonlinear method based on a Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) to improve the images obtained from Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) is proposed. Estimation of the molten metal characteristic in the Lost Foam Casting (LFC) process is a novel application in the area of the tomography process. The convergence rate of iterative image reconstruction techniques is dependent on the accuracy of the first image. The possibility of the existence of metal in the first image is computed by the proposed fuzzy system. This first image is passed to an iterative image reconstruction technique to get more precise images and to speed up the convergence rate. The proposed technique is able to detect the position of the metal on the periphery of the imaging area by using just eight capacitive sensors. The final results demonstrate the advantage of using the FIS compared to the performance of the iterative back projection image reconstruction technique.     

Visualization of flow pattern in thermosyphon by ECT

Visualization of the liquid flow in a two-phase closed thermosyphon (TPCT) is studied using electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) with optimal step lengths for iterative image reconstruction algorithm. Measurements are made under a range of heating rates. Experimental results demonstrated ECT’s capability of reconstructing images of thin films of the order of μm in thickness. Results are compared with the established theory and agreements and discrepancies are observed for different thresholds. ECT images of the liquid distributions in the TPCT show clear dependence on the variation of working conditions, which reveals the potential of ECT as an advanced technique for monitoring the operation of TPCT.     

Voidage measurement of gas–liquid two-phase flow based on Capacitively Coupled Contactless Conductivity Detection

Based on Capacitively Coupled Contactless Conductivity Detection (C⁴D) technique, a new method for the voidage measurement of conductive gas–liquid two-phase flow is proposed. 15 Conductance signals, which reflect voidage distribution of gas–liquid two-phase flow, are obtained by a six-electrode C⁴D sensor. With the conductance signals, the flow pattern of gas–liquid two-phase flow is identified by flow pattern classifiers and then the voidage measurement is implemented by a corresponding voidage measurement model (for each typical flow pattern, a corresponding voidage measurement model is developed). The conductance measurement of the six-electrode C⁴D sensor is implemented by phase sensitivity demodulation (PSD) method. The flow pattern classifiers and the voidage measurement models are developed by partial least squares (PLS) technique and least squares support vector machine (LS-SVM) technique. Static voidage measurement experiments and dynamic voidage measurement experiments show that the proposed voidage measurement method is effective, the developed six-electrode C⁴D sensor is successful and the measurement accuracy is satisfactory.     

Nanometer-resolution electron microscopy through micrometers-thick water layers

Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) was used to image gold nanoparticles on top of and below saline water layers of several micrometers thickness. The smallest gold nanoparticles studied had diameters of 1.4 nm and were visible for a liquid thickness of up to 3.3 μm. The imaging of gold nanoparticles below several micrometers of liquid was limited by broadening of the electron probe caused by scattering of the electron beam in the liquid. The experimental data corresponded to analytical models of the resolution and of the electron probe broadening as function of the liquid thickness. The results were also compared with Monte Carlo simulations of the STEM imaging on modeled specimens of similar geometry and composition as used for the experiments. Applications of STEM imaging in liquid can be found in cell biology, e.g., to study tagged proteins in whole eukaryotic cells in liquid and in materials science to study the interaction of solid:liquid interfaces at the nanoscale.     

An autonomous phase-boundary detection technique for colloidal hard sphere suspension experiments

Colloidal suspensions of monodisperse spheres are used as physical models of thermodynamic phase transitions and as precursors to photonic band gap materials. Current techniques for identifying the phase boundaries involve manually identifying the phase transitions, which is very tedious and time-consuming. In addition, current image analysis techniques are not able to distinguish between densely packed phases within conventional microscope images, which are mainly characterized by degrees of randomness or order with similar grayscale value properties. We have developed an intelligent machine vision technique that automatically identifies colloidal phase boundaries. The technique utilizes intelligent image processing algorithms that accurately identify and track phase changes vertically or horizontally for a sequence of colloidal hard sphere suspension images. This technique is readily adaptable to any imaging application wherein regions of interest are distinguished from the background by differing patterns of motion over time.     

Measurements of translational slug velocity and slug length using an image processing technique

Slug flow is a common flow regime that occurs in various industries, such as oil, gas, and power generation industries. In this study, the mean slug translational velocity and slug liquid length were measured using Phantom 9.2 software and an image processing analysis technique. The adopted image processing technique involved the analysis of video frames recorded from a high-speed camera (Phantom 9.2) in a horizontal transparent pipe using a combination of the approximate median method and blob analysis, along with an additional morphological process for detecting and segregating individual slugs. The experimental data were obtained from a designed two-phase flow test section, in which sets of superficial water and air velocities were selected to generate numerous slug flows. A good agreement with a maximum deviation of 6.7% between the estimated slug parameters from the adopted technique and the Phantom cine view controller software was achieved. Additionally, the developed technique provided precise results with a high processing speed of 10 frames per second.     

The partially wetted bearing—extended Reynolds equation

The artificial no-slip boundary conditions on the liquid/solid interfaces are traditionally used widely. Due to the advances on the measurement technique and interface sciences, the applications of no-slip boundary conditions on micro-systems are challenged continuously. The ‘slip effects’ are observed in small clearance measurement or by treating the surfaces hydrophobic. The non-Newtonian power-law fluid as well as the Navier-slip boundary conditions is considered in the partially wetted bearings. A perturbation technique is utilized to derive the extended Reynolds equations. The analysis applied either to Couette–dominated highly non-Newtonian fluids, or to Newtonian fluids with arbitrary Couette-Poiseuille components. Finally, the effects of slip parameters on the bearing performances are discussed.     

Electromagnetic inspection of a two-phase flow of GaInSn and argon

In the continuous casting process, an adequate control of liquid steel flow through the submerged entry nozzle is essential for maintaining steel cleanliness and ensuring good surface quality in downstream processing. Monitoring the flow in the nozzle presents a challenge for the instrumentation system because of the high temperature environment and the limited access to the nozzle in between the tundish and the mould.In this paper, the distribution of a two-phase liquid metal/gas flow is studied by using a liquid metal laboratory model of an industrial steel caster and an inductive sensor array. The experiments were performed with the liquid eutectic alloy GaInSn as an analogue for liquid steel, which has similar conductive properties as molten steel and allows the measurements at room temperature. A scaled (approx. 1:10) experimental rig consisting of a tundish, a stopper rod, a nozzle and a mould was used. Argon gas was injected through the centre of the stopper rod and the behavior of two-phase GaInSn/argon flows was studied.The electromagnetic system used in the experiments to monitor the behavior of two-phase GaInSn/argon flows consists of an array of 8 equally spaced inductive coils arranged around the object, a data acquisition system and a host computer. The present system operates at 10 kHz and has a capture rate of 10 frames per second.The results show clearly that the injection of the argon gas is distinguishable from the single phase flow by observing the appearance of oscillation patterns. These oscillations become more dominant with the increase of the argon flow. In some cases two main oscillation patterns were present in the raw signals. In general, the signals and the reconstructed void fractions in the nozzles are highly correlated with the observed oscillations of the level height in the mould and the pressure in the nozzle.     

Electrical capacitance tomography using an accelerated proximal gradient algorithm

Image reconstruction in electrical capacitance tomography requires a solution of an ill-posed inverse problem. This paper applies an accelerated proximal gradient (APG) singular value thresholding algorithm, which is originally proposed for the matrix completion problem, to image two-phase flow. Aiming to improve the image quality, a nuclear norm-based regularization technique is adopted to treat the ill-posedness of the inverse problem, and a simple updating technique is used to update the sensitivity matrix. Both typical and complicated distributions (e.g., "sun-rise" and cross-shape), have been examined based on a 16-electrode configuration. The results showed that the APG algorithm with updated sensitivity matrix could produce higher quality images when compared to the algorithm based on the typical sensitivity matrix. Both simulation and experiment results indicate that the algorithm developed has been able to achieve good quality reconstructed images with relativity fast computation speed for the cases tested in this paper.