Sensors and Instrumentation for Monitoring and Control of Multi-Phase Separation

Multi-phase separation, in particular crude oil separation, is an important process in the oil industry. Usually, crude oil from oil wells is pumped to large tanks (typically 2 metres in diameter and 5-10 metres in length) to separate gas, oil, water and other materials, such as sand, aiming to extract oil. Most crude oil separators rely on gravity separation and the separation process takes a long time. To optimise the use of separators, it is important to understand the internal behaviour of the separators, i.e. it is important to monitor the separation process and to measure the multi-interfaces between different materials, such as gas-foam, foam-oil, oil-emulsion, emulsion-water and water-sand (see Figure 1).