Abstract
A 360° twisted helical capacitance sensor was developed for holdup measurement in horizontal two-phase stratified flow. Instead of suppressing nonlinear response, the sensor was optimized in such a way that a ‘sine-like’ function was displayed on top of the linear function. This concept of design had been implemented and verified in both software and hardware. A good agreement was achieved between the finite element model of proposed design and the approximation model (pure sinusoidal function), with a maximum difference of ±1.2%. In addition, the design parameters of the sensor were analysed and investigated. It was found that the error in symmetry of the sinusoidal function could be minimized by adjusting the pitch of helix. The experiments of air-water and oil-water stratified flows were carried out and validated the sinusoidal relationship with a maximum difference of ±1.2% and ±1.3% for the range of water holdup from 0.15 to 0.85. The proposed design concept therefore may pose a promising alternative for the optimization of capacitance sensor design.
Highlights
Horizontal two-phase flow occurs widely in the petroleum, nuclear, and chemical industries.Pipeline transportation of natural gas in the presence of a liquid phase or mixture of crude oil and water are examples of two-phase flow [1]
One of the most common observations in two-phase flow is the complete separation between the two phases at moderately low velocities, where such a phenomenon is known as stratified flow
We propose to exploit the sinusoidal response characteristics as a novel design concept of helical capacitance sensor for holdup measurement in two-phase stratified flow
Summary
Pipeline transportation of natural gas in the presence of a liquid phase or mixture of crude oil and water are examples of two-phase flow [1]. One of the most common observations in two-phase flow is the complete separation between the two phases at moderately low velocities, where such a phenomenon is known as stratified flow. Intermittent, and annular flows can be observed at higher velocities [2]. A number of techniques have been applied to measure the holdup in two-phase flow, e.g., X-ray, gamma ray, optical, ultrasonic, and capacitive method [3,4]. In addition to two-phase flow measurements, the capacitive sensing technique has been adopted in numerous applications, e.g., occupancy, motion, position, displacement, level, touch, pressure, humidity, and moisture detectors [13,14]
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