Abstract
A multiphase flow measurement technique plays a critical role in the studies of heat and mass transfer characteristics and mechanism of the gas–liquid two-phase, the practical measurement of the gas–liquid flow and the improvement of multiphase theoretical models. The four-sensor electrical probe as an emerging measurement method has been proved to be able to get the local flow parameters of multi-dimensional two-phase flow. However, few studies have been reported using the four-sensor probe to obtain the interface information (e.g., the interface direction and velocity). This paper presents a new signal processing method by which the interface direction and velocity can be obtained, besides void fraction, interfacial area concentration (IAC) and bubble chord length. The key solution is to employ the vector-based calculating method, which possesses the merits of simplicity and efficiency, to gain the interface velocity vector through legitimately assuming a direction of the interface velocity. A miniaturized four-sensor electrical probe was made and a gas–liquid two-phase flow experiment was performed to test the proposed signal process scheme. The two-phase flow was controlled to be in cap-bubble flow regime. To validate the availability and reliability of the proposed method, the local flow parameters obtained by the probe measurement were compared with the results from visual measurement technique in the same flow conditions. The comparison indicates that the above local flow parameters from four-sensor probe measurement are in good agreement with the visual measurement results, with maximum deviations of chord length of 8.7%, thereby proving the correctness of the proposed method.
Highlights
Gas–liquid two-phase flow is a common phenomenon occurring in petroleum, chemical, refrigeration and power generation industries [1,2,3]
In the pioneering literature related to four-sensor probe, the interfacial velocity can only be obtained for the component that is vertical to the interface itself
Considering the fact that the explicit expression of bubble or interfacial velocity for four-sensor probe has not been completely developed, this paper proposes that, if the moving direction of interface can be ascertained prior to probe measurement, the above assumptions will be unnecessary and the full interfacial velocity can be acquired
Summary
Gas–liquid two-phase flow is a common phenomenon occurring in petroleum, chemical, refrigeration and power generation industries [1,2,3]. The double-sensor probe can be applied to measure local flow void fraction, IAC and magnitude of velocity when the two-phase flow is very consistently stable bubbly flow, and the accuracy can be very high without too much care to the signal process and correction algorithm [34]. The above simplifications when calculating the total interface velocity vector only apply to special cases Considering this fact, the local interface velocity directions can be practically provided by prior measurement, flow simulation and even other legitimate assumption in many two-phase flows. A new signal processing method for four-sensor probe to get the bubble velocity vector was developed in this study and the vector-based calculation was used for the first time to deduct the local flow parameters. It can able provide significant database for the improvement of two-phase models
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