Experimental Investigation on Measurement Characteristics of WMS for Gas-Liquid Slug Flow

Cenwei Sun, Ying Xu, Chao yuan, Tao Li, Huimin Ma, Yumeng Zhang, Xili Ba

Abstract

With the development of the gas-liquid two phase flow dynamics theory and the continuous improvement of two phase flowrate measurement requirements, the importance of slug flow research has become increasingly prominent. The wire mesh sensor (WMS), which consists of the perpendicular "cross-point" between the transmitting wires and receiving wires, forms a particular "hard field" measurement mode. This paper aims toinvestigate the measurement characteristics and accuracy of a 16×16-electrode conductivity WMS with a spatial resolution of 3.125 mm for gas-liquid two phase slug flow by means of flow experiments. Experimentswere performed in a 50 mm horizontal pipe with air and water as the working medium at atmospheric conditions, meanwhile, the time series data were collected by WMS. Comparing the cross sectional, a good correspondence can be found in the cross sectional direction between axial reconstructed images of fluid distribution and averaged void fraction time series. The WMS can realize the quantitative measurement of local void fraction and the qualitative spatial phase reconstruction of fluid distribution. Furthermore, distribution characteristics of the cross sectional averaged void fraction time series of gas-liquid two phase slug flow were analyzed. We found when superficial gas velocity is less than 3 m/s, the gas phase mainly exists in the form of elongate gas slug. When superficial gas velocity is around 5 m/s, it appears as typical bullet-shape gas slug. As superficial gas velocity increases to 10 m/s, the liquid slug becomes blurred and the gas phase almost penetrates through the liquid slug structures. In addition, a Probability Density Function (PDF) is generated from the instantaneous cross sectional averaged void fraction data for different flow regime conditions. The results show that the PDFs for lower superficial gas velocity case (3 m/s), two peaks in the void fraction signal are observed. Nevertheless, with an increase in superficial gas velocity, it is seen that the peak in the low void fraction region, which corresponds to the liquid slug structures, becomes much smaller even disappears.

Keywords

Wire Mesh Sensor; Gas-liquid flow; Slug flow; Flow reconstruction; Void fraction

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IMEKO-TC9-2019-047.pdf

DOI

10.21014/tc9-2022.047

IMEKO TC

TC9 - Flow Measurement

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