Advanced electromagnetic flowmetry for slug flow: numerical signal prediction and calibration

Abstract

The transient nature and complex flow geometries of two-phase gas–liquid flows cause fundamental difficulties when measuring flow velocity using an electromagnetic flowmeter. Recently, a current-sensing flowmeter was introduced to obtain measurements with high temporal resolution. In this study, current-sensing flowmeter theory was applied to measure the fast velocity transients in slug flows. To do this, the velocity fields of axisymmetric gas–liquid slug flow in a vertical pipe were obtained using volume-of-fluid (VOF) method and the virtual potential distributions for the electrodes of finite size were also computed using the finite volume method for the simulated slug flow. The output signal prediction for slug flow was carried out from the velocity and virtual potential (or weight function) fields. The flowmeter was numerically calibrated to obtain the cross-sectional liquid mean velocity at an electrode plane from the predicted output signal. Two calibration parameters are required for this procedure: a flow pattern coefficient and a localization parameter. The flow pattern coefficient was defined by the ratio of the liquid resistance between the electrodes for two-phase flow with respect to that for single-phase flow, and the localization parameter was introduced to avoid errors in the flowmeter readings caused by liquid acceleration or deceleration around the electrodes. These parameters were also calculated from the computed velocity and virtual potential fields. The results can be used to obtain the liquid mean velocity from the slug flow signal measured by a current-sensing flowmeter.