EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF A CAPACITIVE TOMOGRAPHY SYSTEM FOR MULTIPHASE FLOW

This paper presents the experimental development of a capacitive tomography system applied to the study of multiphase flows. A capacitance sensor with eight electrodes and a capacitance measurement transducer were constructed. The two-phase flow void fraction was obtained through an electric-mechanical measurement system. The reconstruction of the image of several two-phase flows was obtained using the linear back projection method. Numerical simulation of the capacitance values between electrode pairs wereperformed, through the method of finite elements, in order to obtain the sensibility maps. This experimental procedure showed the influence of several parameters on the quality of the reconstructed images. The quality of the reconstructed images for air-water and water-oil flows, for different void fractions, demonstrated the validity of the tomography system developed

Characterization Of oil/ gas flow pattern in vertical pipes using electrical capacitance tomography

Electrical Capacitance Tomography provides the opportunity to visualize the contents of a process of many applications such as pipeline and obtain information on the flow configuration. Multiphase flow is an extremely complex field of fluid mechanics; the characteristics of the operations of many equipmentin different areas of industry such as oil and power generation are determined by the nature of flow of two phase or multiphase. In this study, a twin plane Electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) electrode was designed, fabricated and used to image and characterize oil/gas flow in 67 mm pipe. The experiments were carried out in inclinable facility in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Nottingham University, UK. Conditions used are gas superficial velocities of 0.05 to 5.52 m/s and liquid superficial velocities of 0 to 0.54 m/s. The cross-section averaged void fraction and its variation in time were measured using electrical capacitance tomography. Also, Probability Density Functions are demonstrated and the structure velocity of flow is presented as well. In this project, Bubbly, slug, and churn flow configurations was observed. In addition, high speed video images of flow were obtained simultaneously and compared with tomographic images of the ECT system

Waxy Cooled Crude Oil Characterization by Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT)

This paper discussed on the project entitled, “Waxy Cooled Crude Oil Characterization by Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT)”. Current research towards the characterizing of the crude oil seems to be sprout positively according to different field of studies that try to fulfill demanded from industrial. As parallel towards this growth, in this project the author reported a study regarding the behavior of gelled crude which is a waxy crude oil which undergoes thermal shrinkage or cooling process. The study is about gathering all possible information about the waxy crude oil for further study which will lead to the result of new correlation for waxy crude oil. The objective of this project to design an Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) sensor for the characterization of cooled waxy crude oil within the pipeline in the static flow condition. Before that, sensor calibration set up must be done for lower and upper range of the material permittivity as the sensor standard detection. For the online measurement, the visualization and other raw measurement in a cross section using multi-electrode capacitance sensor will be observe as the temperature been varied. The result and discussion contain the fabrication result of the ECT sensor like calibration and online measurement, with some discussion about the result obtained which show the temperature is inversely proportional to the raw capacitance of the crude oil. For future work, the experimental procedure will be developed by further test on dynamic flow measurement in order to get another important variable parameter as to get real characterization of the crude oil as in the real industrial situation

Fluidized bed hydrodynamics by means of electrical capacitance tomography

Fluidized bed reactors are utilized in a variety of applications from hydrocarbon cracking to drying of mineral ore to coating of pharmaceutical pills. A proper understanding of bed hydrodynamics is essential to properly design, operate and control the process. Intrusive and non-intrusive measurement techniques have been utilized to study various aspects of fluidized bed behaviour. Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) has been utilized to determine the distribution of gas-solid mixture in the bed. The Digital Image Analysis Technique (DIAT) is used to determine the bubble behavior in two-dimensional beds. The bubble behavior has not been studied by ECT. The premise of this research is to test a new technique by combining ECT solid fraction maps with image processing techniques to determine the bubble characteristics in the bed. Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) was used to map the relative fractions of sand-air mixture in a 14 cm ID acrylic vessel at two different static bed heights. The voids were defined as the areas of gas-solid mixture with value of less than 0.25. Afterwards simple image analysis techniques were applied to isolate bubbles from the rest of the bed. The resulting data were converted into binary images to extract hydrodynamic information. The two main parameters of interest were the bubble diameter and its rise velocity. The experimental average velocities and average diameters matched the results obtained from respective correlations in the literature. However, large spreads existed for both these parameters due to the simultaneous presence of bubbles and slugs. The experimental fluidized bed did not transition fully into the turbulent regime but has the character of a hybrid bubbling-slugging regime. This is illustrated by experimental diameters which indicate presence of bubbles and slugs simultaneously. The same information was illustrated by experimental velocity-diameter envelopes (minimum and maximum values) which overlapped for higher flow conditions. The radial solid fraction distribution illustrated the same point with an inverted “M” profile which has been associated previously with regime transition. The path of bubble rise was identified, mainly rising through the midway point between the bed’s center and its inner edge. Five different types of bubbles were identified using the two dimensional binary images of voids. However, this technique can only be used for regimes where voids/bubbles are the main source of gas transfer to the surface of the bed

CHARACTERIZATION OF WAXY COOLED CRUDE OIL USING ELECTRICAL RESISTANCE TOMOGRAPHY (ERT)

Electrical resistance tomography (ERT) is one of the most common, widely implemented and promising method in production cross-sectional image displaying the distribution of electrical conductivity for a particular multiphase flow. The method includes measurement of electrical resistance characteristics converting it to image mixtures when the continuous phase is conductive. ERT is well suited in monitoring gas-liquid flow, whereby the liquid is in a continuous phase whereas the gas is in a disperse phase. Other type of tomography sensors which involves measurement of electrical characteristics includes electrical capacitance tomography (ECT), electromagnetic tomography (EMT) and electrical impedance tomography (EIT). The mentioned electrical tomographies are safe without any radiation hazard and low cost comparing to nuclear based methods. ERT has the advantage among others for its excellent time resolution produced from very fast measurements of electrical resistance. Multiphase flow is of great importance in various industrial processes. As the most important characteristic of a multiphase flow, the flow regime not only characterizes the flow condition in an explicit way, but also determines the measurement model in each measuring method. The main focus for this project is to implement ERT for detection and measurement of gas void fractions in waxy cooled crude oil. Measurement of void fraction of two-phase flows remains a challenging area. Thus, the report which consists of an introduction, problem statement, objectives, literature review and methodology is used to get a better understanding, set targets and solve the issues in hand

A schema for generic process tomography sensors

A schema is introduced that aims to facilitate the widespread exploitation of the science of process tomography (PT) that promises a unique multidimensional sensing opportunity. Although PT has been developed to an advanced state, applications have been laboratory or pilot-plant based, configured on an end-to-end basis, and limited typically to the formation of images that attempt to represent process contents. The schema facilitates the fusion of multidimensional internal process state data in terms of a model that yields directly usable process information, either for design model confirmation or for effective plant monitoring or control, here termed a reality visualization model (RVM). A generic view leads to a taxonomy of process types and their respective RVM. An illustrative example is included and a review of typical sensor system components is given

NUMERICAL STUDY OF A CAPACITIVE TOMOGRAPHY SYSTEM FOR MULTIPHASE FLOW

This paper presents the development of a capacitive tomography system applied to the study of multiphase flows. A numerical analysis, through the finite elements method, was performed to obtain data for the optimization ofthe geometry of the capacitance sensor. The image reconstruction of several flow patterns was obtained through the method of linear back projection, allowing the verification of the influence of several parameters upon the quality of the images, making its application easier in an experimental procedure. Several numerical simulations were performed for air-water flow, for the stratified and annular patterns. A resource of cut-off level, which depends of previous knowledge of the liquid fraction, was implemented in a way to improve the quality of the reconstructed images. The results obtained for several values of void fraction and for different patterns of flow, demonstrate the validity of the developed tomographic system

Electrical Capacitance Volume Tomography (ECVT) for industrial and medical applications-An Overview

Tomography is a non-invasive, non-intrusive imaging technique allowing the visualization of phase dynamics in industrial and biological processes. This article reviews progress in Electrical Capacitance Volume Tomography (ECVT). ECVT is a direct 3D visualizing technique, unlike three-dimensional imaging, which is based on stacking 2D images to obtain an interpolated 3D image. ECVT has recently matured for real time, non-invasive 3-D monitoring of processes involving materials with strong contrast in dielectric permittivity. In this article, ECVT sensor design, optimization and performance of various sensors seen in literature are summarized. Qualitative Analysis of ECVT image reconstruction techniques has also been presented

Visualization of Gas–Oil–Water Flow in Horizontal Pipeline Using Dual-Modality Electrical Tomographic Systems

Employing dual-modality tomography inherently involves data from multiple dimensions, and thus a coherent approach is required to fully exploit the information from various dimensions. This paper describes a novel approach for dual-modality electrical resistance and capacitance tomography (ERT-ECT) to visualize gas-oil-water flow in horizontal pipeline. Compared with the conventional methods with dual-modality tomographic systems, the approach based on thresholding takes the account of multi-dimensional data, which therefore is capable of providing insights into investigated flow in both spatial and temporal terms. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the approach, by which six common flow regimes in horizontal pipeline flow are visualized based on the multi-dimensional data with ERT-ECT systems, including (wavy) stratified flow, plug flow, slug flow, annular flow, and bubbly flow. Although the present approach is proposed for data acquired with an ERT-ECT system, it is potentially adaptable to other dual-modality tomographic systems that use concentration tomograms as inputs