Sensor‐based flow pattern detection—gas–liquid–liquid upflow through a vertical pipe

Abstract

Flow distribution during gas–liquid–liquid upflow through a vertical pipe is investigated. The optical probe technique has been adopted for an objective identification of flow patterns. The probability density function (PDF) analysis of the probe signals has been used to identify the range of existence of the different patterns. Dispersed and slug flow have been identified from the nature of the PDF, which is bimodal for slug flow and unimodal for dispersed flow. The water continuous, oil continuous, and emulsion type flow distributions are distinguished on the basis of the PDF moments. The method is particularly useful at high flow rates where visualization techniques fail. Based on this, a flow pattern detection algorithm has been presented. Two different representations of flow pattern maps have been suggested for gas–liquid–liquid three phase flow. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 60: 3362–3375, 2014

Multi-Scale Long-Range Magnitude and Sign Correlations in Vertical Upward Oil–Gas–Water Three-Phase Flow

“…Recently, Mukherjee et al [15], using optical probe signals, inferred the flow patterns during gas-liquid-liquid three-phase upflow through a pipe laser sensor. However, churn flow was not involved in the experiment, and the difference between churn flow and slug flow was not mentioned.…”

Flow Regime detection using gamma-ray-based multiphase flowmeter: a machine learning approach

“…Flow regime could also be determined by tracking the fluctuation of signals from measurement sensor caused by fluctuation of phase fractions presented in the flow. A lot of technologies have been used for flow regime detection by finding correlations between statistical features of the measurement data and actual flow regimes, such as capacitance probe, pressure sensor, ultrasonic tomography, optical probe and microwave resonance frequency measurement [4][5][6][7][8]. In above studies, flow regimes are correlated, directly or indirectly, with the fluctuations of sensor measurements using PDF or similar statistical tool.…”