A new visualisation and measurement technology for water continuous multiphase flows

This paper reports the performance of a research prototype of a new multiphase flow instrument to non-invasively measure the phase flow rates, with the capability to rapidly image the flow distributions of two- and three-phase (gas and/or oil in water) flows. The research prototype is based on the novel concepts of combining vector Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) sensor (for measuring dispersed-phase velocity and fraction) with an electromagnetic flow metre (EMF, for measuring continuous-phase velocity with the EIT input) and a gradiomanometer flow-mixture density metre (FDM), in addition to on-line water conductivity, temperature and absolute pressure measurements. EIT–EMF–FDM data fusion embedded in the research prototype, including online calibration/compensation of conductivity change due to the change of fluids' temperature or ionic concentration, enables the determination of mean concentration, mean velocity and hence the mean flow rate of each individual phase based on the measurement of dispersed-phase distributions and velocity profiles. Results from first flow-loop experiments conducted at Schlumberger Gould Research (SGR) will be described. The performance of the research prototype in flow-rate measurements are evaluated by comparison with the flow-loop references. The results indicate that optimum performance of the research prototype for three-phase flows is confined within the measuring envelope 45–100% Water-in-Liquid Ratio (WLR) and 0–45% Gas Volume Fraction (GVF). Within the scope of this joint research project funded by the UK Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), only vertical flows with a conductive continuous liquid phase will be addressed.     

Extracting reference voltages from measurement voltages for oil-water two-phase flow measurement of electrical impedance tomography

To apply electrical impedance tomography (EIT) for heterogeneous two-phase flow measurement, reference voltages have to be measured, which requires the entire pipeline filled with a homogeneous medium. Such process is often time-consuming, costly and infeasible in some cases. Reference voltages acquired initially could not be used later, because of electrical conductivity change of two-phase flow caused by temperature change or chemical reaction. It will be ideal if reference voltages could be extracted from measurement voltages. In this paper, a novel multiple measurements (MMs) method is proposed by data fitting and empirical formula to establish the mapping model from measurement voltages to reference voltages, and the effectiveness of the method is proved by the oil-water two-phase flow experiment. Compared with the measurement-scale feature (MSF) and best homogeneous (BH) methods, the proposed MMs method achieves 6.38% average relative error (RE) and 4.96% average volume fraction relative error (VFRE) in the test set. The work enables the accurate estimation of the reference voltage and thus the accurate measurement of the volume fraction of oil-water two-phase flows, which will broaden the application of EIT in the field of two-phase flow measurement.     

A novel tomographic sensing system for high electrically conductive multiphase flow measurement

Electrical resistance tomography (ERT) has been widely applied in order to extract flow information from various multiphase flows, e.g. the concentration and velocity distributions of the gas phase in gas–water two phase flows. However, the quality of measurement may become very poor from a multiphase flow whose continuous phase has a considerably high electrical conductivity, e.g. seawater (5.0 S/m), using a conventional current-injected ERT system. It is known that a large current excitation is necessary in order to enhance the measurement sensitivity. In practice, it will be very challenging to build a current source with a large amplitude (more than 75 mA) and a high output impedance at a high excitation frequency. This paper presents an implementation of an ERT system with a voltage source and current sensing to overcome the limits of the current source. The amplitude of the current output can reach more than 300 mA. A logarithmic amplifier is used to compress the signal’s dynamic ranges from 18.32 dB to 1.66 dB. The structure and features of this system are presented in this paper and the performances of key circuits are reported. Finally the experimental results from a highly conductive flow (1.06 S/m) are analysed and compared with the measurements obtained from a low conductive flow.     

Mass flow rate measurement of gas-liquid two-phase flow using acoustic-optical-Venturi mutisensors

The measurement of multiphase flow parameters is essential for the online monitoring of industrial production and energy metering. In this paper, a multi-sensor experimental measurement device is designed based on NIR, acoustic emission sensors, and throated Venturi. The measurement information is decomposed using modal decomposition, and the characteristic variables of the gas volume fraction are extracted by flow noise decoupling and light attenuation analysis. A new gas volume fraction model is proposed based on Gradient Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT) through feature-level fusion, and the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of the gas volume fraction prediction models is within 4% for the three flow patterns. A new flow rate model is established based on the Homogeneous and Collins models. Laboratory results indicate that the MAPE of the flow rate model is 1.56%, and 98.61% relative deviations are within ±20% error band. The study provides a new method for online measurement of multiphase fluid motion and a theoretical basis for sensing mechanism and measurement of multiphase flow.     

差压式湿气两相流量计的校准

伴随着工业技术的不断发展,湿气流量的测量日益增多,湿气流量计的校准工作日益迫切,亟待解决。本文介绍了在湿气流量计量领域中广泛应用的差压式湿气两相流流量计的原理,并在天津大学电气与自动化工程学院的中压闭环湿气标定装置中对其进行了校准,对该流量计的气相和液相的不确定度进行了评定,为今后开展相关流量计的校准工作提供了参考和数据支持。     

Validating dilute settling suspensions numerical data through MRI,UVP and EIT measurements

The measurement of fluid dynamic quantities are of great interest both for extending the range of validity of current correlations to be used in equipment design and for verification of fundamental hydrodynamic models. Studies where comparisons are made between imaging techniques serve to provide confidence on the validity of each technique for the study of multiphase flow systems. The advantage of cross-validation is that it can help establish the limitations of each technique and the necessary steps towards improvement. A small amount of comparative studies are found in the literature and none of them reports the study of settling particles suspension flow using simultaneously Ultrasonic Velocity Profiling (UVP), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT), at least not to the best of the authors knowledge. In the present paper the authors report efforts made on the characterization of dilute suspensions of glass particles in turbulent flow, with increasing flow velocities and particles concentrations, in a pilot rig at a laboratorial scale, using both MRI, EIT and UVP: direct comparisons of EIT, MRI and UVP measurements acquired and mixture model numerical simulations are presented and the level of agreement explored.     

The development of a multiphase flow meter without separation based on sloped open channel dynamics

The online continuous measurement of multiphase flow is one of the most key technologies which influences the development of oil industry in future. A new type of multiphase meter system is developed based on the open channel flow. The test pipe of the meter is slightly slopped to make the flow pattern mainly stratified flow. Based on the study of oil and gas flow dynamics in the open channel test pipe, the liquid metering model and gas metering model are deduced to calculate the gas and the liquid flow rate, the water cut is measured online by the principle of differential pressure. This device can work online without the separation of the production fluid. By the lab test and field application test, the results of the metering system show that the liquid flow rate errors are within ±5%, the gas flow rate errors can be within ±5%, and the water cut absolute error is within ±2%, which can meet the demands of the field flow rate measurement.     

A reference conductivity fitting method for ERT system to achieve void fraction of gas/liquid flow

The void fraction is one of the key parameters in the measurement of gas/liquid two-phase flow. It can be derived from the absolute conductivity distribution based on Maxwell׳s theory. With Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) technology, the absolute conductivity distribution is obtained by multiplying the relative conductivity image with the reference conductivity which is conventionally the liquid conductivity of a gas/liquid flow. Unfortunately the liquid conductivity is not always available. Therefore, a conductivity fitting method is proposed in this paper, to find an optimal reference conductivity, which will be used in substituting the liquid conductivity to reconstruct the quasi-absolute conductivity image. The optimal reference conductivity fitting method is proposed and validated by simulation and experiments under certain flow regimes, e.g. slug flow, annular flow and bubbly flow. The simulation and experimental results show that, independent from prior-knowledge, the fitted quasi-homogenous conductivity is close to the average conductivity of the sensing field. It also leads to a much more accurate estimation of void fraction than the conventional method using liquid conductivity as the reference. With the proposed method, the ERT technique can play a more significant role in the measurement of multiphase flow (MPF).     

Flow pattern identification for gas-oil two-phase flow based on a virtual capacitance tomography sensor and numerical simulation

Gas-oil two-phase flow is widely encountered in oil exploitation and transportation pipelines. It's complex and transient changes of flow regimes present a great challenge for accurate and real-time measurement. As a non-invasion and real-time measuring method, electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) is suitable for the transient measurement of non-conductive gas-oil flow. However, the highly random and nonlinear nature of multiphase flow make it difficult and limited to investigate the flow parameters based on either static or dynamic measurement. In this research, the whole process of dynamic measurement of ECT applying in gas-oil two-phase flow is thoroughly studied, including simulation calculation, experimental validation and comprehensive data analysis. A simulation approach by coupling the flow and electrostatic field is proposed based on a virtual ECT sensor, in order to monitor the gas-oil two-phase flow characteristics. Based on FLUENT and COMSOL platform, the numerical simulation under six typical flow patterns in a horizontal pipe is carried out. Combining the visualized image generated by ECT measurement and the theory of flow pattern transition, the formation mechanism and structural characteristics of different gas-oil flow patterns are analyzed in detail. Furthermore, this research attempts to analyze the signal fluctuation characteristics caused by flow pattern change, in order to access more in-depth flow information implied in the original capacitance data, via time-series analysis as well as frequency domain analysis based on Flourier Transform. At last, a series of dynamic experiment is conducted to verify the feasibility of the simulation and data analysis approach. The experiment focuses on the flow pattern transition, gas-liquid dynamic characteristics and noise influence in the actual process. It can be concluded from the results of simulation and experiment tests, combining the visualized images and the dynamic characteristics of capacitance signals can make it more effective and intuitive for flow pattern identification, which might be used for the online measurement in real-industry process.     

Characterization of flow homogeneity downstream of a slotted orifice plate in a two-phase flow using electrical resistance tomography

Two-phase flows are complex and unpredictable in nature, commonly encountered in a majority of fluid transport systems. The accurate measurement of two-phase flow is critical for a wide range of applications from wet stream to multiphase flows. There are different methods to meter two-phase flow in various industries. One approach is to produce a flow meter that does not require the individual flow components to be separated and measured separately. This goal can be met if a homogenized mixture is produced which can be measured by a standard single phase flow meter. The slotted orifice plate was invented as a flow meter for single phase flows, it is independent upon upstream flow conditions. Slotted orifice plate flow meter's utilization in two-phase flow revealed that it is highly capable of working as a flow conditioner transforming most of the multiphase flow regimes into a fairly uniform mixture. This study measures how the relative homogeneity of an air/water mixture varies downstream of the slotted plate in a horizontal pipe for various upstream conditions including elongated bubble and slug flow regimes using electrical resistance tomography (ERT). According to this study, the optimal location with a maximum homogeneity was determined to be between 1.5 and 2.5 pipe diameters downstream of the slotted orifice plate. This indicates that placing a slotted orifice plate at the obtained distance upstream of another flow meter such as a venturi coupled with a density measuring device like a radiation based densitometer or an electrical impedance device will help in obtaining accurate multiphase flow rate measurement.     

液固两相介质多频超声粒径分布测量

液固两相流动广泛存在于工业过程中,其粒径分布信息在线测量对生产优化与控制十分重要。超声法作为无扰动式多相流动参数测量方法,其衰减特性与固相颗粒粒径、体积分数等密切相关,可用于实现粒径分布在线测量。本文搭建液固两相介质超声衰减实验装置,装置采用石英砂作为固相颗粒,自来水为液相,利用线性调频超声信号激励研究液固两相介质的超声衰减特性。实验结果表明,随着激励频率和固相体积分数的升高,超声衰减系数逐渐增加,采用Twomey及遗传算法等对液固两相介质粒径分布进行反演,测试结果与马尔文激光粒度分析仪的粒径分布结果相比,相关系数为0.918。     

Developing and evaluation of an electrical impedance tomography system for measuring solid volumetric concentration in dredging scale

In this study, an electrical impedance tomography (EIT) system was developed for measuring of sediments flow properties in dredging pipes. Considering relatively large diameter of the dredger pipe, salinity of seawater and online commitment of the system, some trade-offs were considered. A finite element model (FEM) was established for 16 EIT sensor to study the detection sensitivity. In the first stage, the EIT system is embedded in the loop of flow with diameter of 610 mm for the laboratory experiments, then the system performance was investigated in real conditions on a Suction Hopper Dredger. The EIT system performance was evaluated at three levels of NaCl concentration (7.5, 11.59 and 13.68 gr/lit) and temperature (17, 25, 30.7 °C). The standard deviation (SD) and root mean squire error (RMSE) parameters were used to evaluate the system performance, behind some conceptual assessments. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) of measured data show that the changes in salinity and temperature of liquid phase have no significant effect on the measured concentration by the EIT-based system. The coefficient of determination was almost 0.98 to 0.99 in different levels of sediment concentration that shows a linear trend and acceptable correlation between the data obtained from the EIT-based system and the data measured by the sampling method.     

Velocity measurement for two-phase flows based on ultrafast X-ray tomography

The ultrafast electron beam X-ray tomography scanner ROFEX is used for the investigation of multiphase flows. Its functional principle allows us to obtain sequences of cross-sectional flow images, which shows local attenuation properties of the flow. Hence, the X-ray CT images mainly reveal the shape and interfaces of flow constituents, such as gas, liquid and solids via their X-ray contrast. It is, however, more difficult to obtain velocity information from multiphase flows. In this article we discuss different methods to extract information on the velocities of particles or interfaces as well as for continuous phase. For disperse phase velocity measurement, e.g. in gas–liquid or gas–solids flows, we employ cross-correlation based techniques using two imaging planes. Apart from the standard cross-correlation technique we developed a method and algorithm, which is capable to identify identical bubbles in the two planes giving us a unique Lagrangian particle-related velocity information. Eventually we give an example of velocity measurement in the continuous liquid phase using an X-ray contrast agent.     

Measurement of velocity profiles in multiphase flow using a multi-electrode electromagnetic flow meter

This paper describes an electromagnetic flow meter for velocity profile measurement in single phase and multiphase flows with non-uniform axial velocity profiles. A Helmholtz coil is used to produce a near-uniform magnetic field orthogonal to both the flow direction and the plane of an electrode array mounted on the internal surface of a non-conducting pipe wall. Induced voltages acquired from the electrode array are related to the flow velocity distribution via variables known as ‘weight values’ which are calculated using finite element software. Matrix inversion is used to calculate the velocity distribution in the flow cross section from the induced voltages measured at the electrode array. This paper presents simulations and experimental results including, firstly the effects of the velocity profile on the electrical potential distribution, secondly the induced voltage distribution at the electrode pair locations, and thirdly the reconstructed velocity profile calculated using the weight values and the matrix inversion method mentioned above. The flow pipe cross-section is divided into a number of pixels and, in the simulations, the mean flow velocity in each of the pixels in single phase flow is calculated from the measured induced voltages. Reference velocity profiles that have been investigated in the simulations include a uniform velocity profile and a linear velocity profile. The results show good agreement between the reconstructed and reference velocity profiles. Experimental results are also presented for the reconstructed velocity profile of the continuous water phase in an inclined solids-in-water multiphase flow for which the axial water velocity distribution is highly non-uniform. The results presented in this paper are most relevant to flows in which variations in the axial flow velocity occur principally in a single direction.     

含气率对往复式油气混输泵排出性能影响

为了研究含气率对往复式油气混输泵排出性能的影响及转速、含气率、流量的相互关系,基于标准k-ε湍流模型和混合多相流模型,采用计算流体力学软件中的动网格技术和用户自定义函数,在介质含气率不同时对混输泵的排出过程进行三维动态仿真模拟。结果表明:介质增压速度、最大流量、平均流量与含气率成反比。根据转速、含气率、流量关系曲线调节转速,使泵的流量与抽油机流量相匹配,为往复式油气混输泵性能参数的选择及现场应用提供数据参考。     

Concentration distribution estimation of fluid through electrical impedance tomography based on interacting multiple model scheme

In this paper, a dynamic reconstruction algorithm is proposed to monitor the concentration distribution inside the fluid vessel based on electrical impedance tomography (EIT). The interacting multiple model (IMM) scheme is employed to enhance the performance of the extended Kalman filter (EKF) in the presence of abrupt measurement uncertainties by inclusion of covariance compensation extended Kalman filter (CCEKF). Computer simulations are also provided to evaluate the reconstruction performance of the proposed algorithm.     

工业电导信号测量仪的研制

提出了一种基于新的激励模式的电导信号测量仪.该装置采用双极性脉冲电压源作为激励源,与交流激励的电导测试系统相比,削弱了介质电极化现象,简化了电路设计,并提高了数据的采集速度和精度.同时还专门设计了具有防腐、避免电化学反应及带有温度补偿的专用电导测量探头.经测试,该系统测量准确、抗干扰能力强,满足了工业流程中溶液电导特性的实时测量要求.     

Determination of void fraction in wet-gas vertical flows via differential pressure measurement

The measurement of void fraction in multiphase flow is important for a wide range of industrial processes. Existing methods for void fraction measurement require intrusive, expensive and potentially hazardous equipments which constrict the flow, adding both capital and operational costs. Two phase flow experiments were carried out at the National Engineering Laboratory (NEL) to measure void fraction via pressure drop in a vertical pipe. Additional experiments are carried out at Spirax Sarco Inc. to validate the efficacy of the method on steam/water flow mixtures at high temperature and pressure, in gas mass fraction range between 0.17 and 0.95 and void fraction range between 0.75 and 1.0. The void fraction calculated by the presented differential pressure (dP) method is confirmed via established correlations. The work demonstrates the efficacy of a low cost, non-intrusive method to determine void fraction in two phase flow over a wide range of flow conditions.     

Effect of IR Transceiver orientation on gas/liquid two-phase flow regimes

Multiphase flows play a vital role in many industrial and naturally occurring processes. Recent trend of miniaturization in mini/micro fluid reactors, compact heat exchangers and micro thrusters requires a thorough knowledge on multiphase flow phenomena in mini/micro channels. The present work is focused on the effect irradiation behavior of infrared rays (IR) during gas liquid two phase flow consisting of thin liquid films inside a mini channel. The influence of size and shape of the slug regime and liquid film thickness on IR rays is analyzed with COMSOL Multi physics package. Experiments are carried out in a 2.5 mm diameter borosilicate glass tube with wall thickness of 0.3 mm. The refraction and transmittance behavior of IR rays on slug and bubbly flow is studied by analyzing the Current-time output of an IR photodiode kept at different angles with the test section. The results are found to be in good agreement with experimental image processing technique and COMSOL results. The results obtained will be useful for designing of IR sensor arrays sensitive to multiphase flows. It can also be used for measurement of liquid film thickness with proper calibration.     

Impedance mapping of particulate multiphase flows

Multiphase flows occur in many operations in the chemical, petroleum and power generation industries, which cover both multi-component and multiphase situations, such air–water, solid–water, steam and air–oil–water as well as their combinations. Due to the correlation of the multiphase and independence of each phase, the correct measuring of multiphase flow, in terms of concentration, local velocity and mass flow rate, is an extremely challenging task. Electrical resistance tomography has been used for visualisation of the concentration profiles and characterisation of fluid dynamics in particulate two-phase systems that have impedance contract between the main fluid and the second phase fluid or component clusters. This paper reviews the author’s and his colleagues’ previous and current work on electrical resistance tomography, particularly on sensing strategies, data collection systems and image reconstruction algorithms. Recent applications on the characterisations of mixing processing, solid–water and the control of a bubble column are introduced.