A CONDUCTIVITY-BASED MEASUREMENT DEVICE TO DETERMINE VOLUME FRACTION AND GAS SLIP VELOCITY FOR MULTIPHASE FLOW

Abstract

Multiphase flow metering is needed in the oil and gas industry for well-monitoring, gas fraction, oil cut, and water cut and tracking of solid content. The two-phase flow of gas and liquid is regularly used in the design and operation of heat exchangers and mass transfer equipment for several industries and power plants. For multiphase flow involving fluids with different electrical properties, electrical conductivity could be used for visualization of flow regimes and flow metering. This work explores the use of a low-cost sensor to study the dynamic response of conductivity for slug flow. A conductive sensor consisting of a voltage source and a measurement device is used to determine the conductivity between two electrical probes inserted into the flow at a spacing of 3.752 mm. The velocity and shape of the bubble entering the sensor is measured using high-speed photography and is used to correlate the electrical signal response to bubble characteristics. The current research is expected to explore the feasibility of using the electrical response of conductive fluids for reconstructing the conductive path length, from which bubble shape and velocity can be determined within a given confining geometry.