Abstract
Electrical resistance tomography (ERT) has been considered as a data collection and image reconstruction method in many multi-phase flow application areas due to its advantages of high speed, low cost and being non-invasive. In order to improve the quality of the reconstructed images, the Total Variation algorithm attracts abundant attention due to its ability to solve large piecewise and discontinuous conductivity distributions. In industrial processing tomography (IPT), techniques such as ERT have been used to extract important flow measurement information. For a moving object inside a pipe, a velocity profile can be calculated from the cross correlation between signals generated from ERT sensors. Many previous studies have used two sets of 2D ERT measurements based on pixel-pixel cross correlation, which requires two ERT systems. In this paper, a method for carrying out flow velocity measurement using a single ERT system is proposed. A novel spatiotemporal total variation regularization approach is utilised to exploit sparsity both in space and time in 4D, and a voxel-voxel cross correlation method is adopted for measurement of flow profile. Result shows that the velocity profile can be calculated with a single ERT system and that the volume fraction and movement can be monitored using the proposed method. Both semi-dynamic experimental and static simulation studies verify the suitability of the proposed method. For in plane velocity profile, a 3D image based on temporal 2D images produces velocity profile with accuracy of less than 1% error and a 4D image for 3D velocity profiling shows an error of 4%.
Highlights
In the process of production, transportation and distribution of fluids, in particular in the petroleum industry, multiphase flow is commonly used
Velocity profile measurement using a high speed two-channel 2D electrical resistance tomography (ERT) and cross-correlation between two separate rings has been investigated for a few decades due to its fast implementation in the industrial field
Since flow is a three-dimensional concept, using 2D ERT to obtain consecutive cross-sectional slices may ignore some occurrences in the flow pipe
Summary
In the process of production, transportation and distribution of fluids, in particular in the petroleum industry, multiphase flow is commonly used. The flow measurement technique using electrical resistance tomography (ERT) and based on cross correlation has been established for many years. In particular 3D ERT, which is feasible as a non-invasive detection method, where the interior distribution can be displayed with high speed data collection [1,2]. ERT can be applied to several fields that could benefit from its property of being non-invasive, low cost of the required hardware system and good mobility. In this case, EIT has been applied to many aspects of the medical field, such as, lung [3], brain [4], and breast [5] imaging, and in the geophysical
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