Abstract
Oil-water two-phase flow is widespread in petroleum industry processes. The study of oil-water two-phase flow in horizontal pipes and the liquid holdup measurement of oil-water two-phase flow are of great importance for the optimization of the oil production process. This paper presents a novel sensor, i.e., a mini-conductance probe (MCP) for measuring pure-water phase conductivity of oil-water segregated flow in horizontal pipes. The MCP solves the difficult problem of obtaining the pure-water correction for water holdup measurements by using a ring-shaped conductivity water-cut meter (RSCWCM). Firstly, using the finite element method (FEM), the spatial sensitivity field of the MCP is investigated and the optimized MCP geometry structure is determined in terms of the characteristic parameters. Then, the responses of the MCP for the oil-water segregated flow are calculated, and it is found that the MCP has better stability and sensitivity to the variation of water-layer thickness in the condition of high water holdup and low flow velocity. Finally, the static experiments for the oil-water segregated flow were carried out and a novel calibration method for pure-water phase conductivity measurements was presented. The validity of the pure-water phase conductivity measurement with segregated flow in horizontal pipes was verified by experimental results.
Highlights
Two-phase flow is widespread in the petroleum industry, chemical engineering, pharmacy and nuclear reaction fields, etc
Progress has been made on the conductance method in previous research, the early work mainly focused on the investigation of the sensitivity distribution of the electric field for vertical small diameter pipes, and paid little attention to the effects of various flow patterns in horizontal pipes on the output response both in terms of linearity and spatial resolution
We present the experimental results to verify the validity of mini-conductance probe (MCP)
Summary
Two-phase flow is widespread in the petroleum industry, chemical engineering, pharmacy and nuclear reaction fields, etc. Progress has been made on the conductance method in previous research, the early work mainly focused on the investigation of the sensitivity distribution of the electric field for vertical small diameter pipes, and paid little attention to the effects of various flow patterns in horizontal pipes on the output response both in terms of linearity and spatial resolution. In vertical production profile logging wells, the RSCWCM measures oil-water mixture phase conductivity online when the fluid flows through the RSCP measuring pipelines. In horizontal production profile logging wells, the oil-water mixture phase conductivity could be measured online in the process of fluid flow by using the RSCWCM [25]. We designed and optimized a MCP for measuring pure-water phase conductivity of oil-water two-phase segregated flows in horizontal pipes.
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