Capability of dual-modality electrical tomography for gas-oil-water three-phase pipeline flow visualisation

Abstract Numerous dual-modality tomography systems have previously been studied for multiphase flow characterisation, however, the capability of the majority of these systems was only demonstrated under limited flow regime conditions, such as stratified flow and slug flow. This paper reports a dual-modality electrical tomography for visualisation of industrial-scale, horizontal gas-oil-water three-phase flows. Experimental conditions include water-to-liquid ratio (WLR) from 0% to 100% in parallel with gas volume fractions (GVF) from 0% to 100%, which produced a variety of flow patterns, typically stratified flow, slug flow, plug flow, bubbly flow, and annular flow. A commercial dual-modality electrical tomographic system was utilised to carry out the measurement. A threshold-based data fusion method was also deployed for the fusion of oil-continuous and water-continuous data to provide full three phase images. The tomography visualisation is validated against optical photographs derived from a high-speed video logger located one diameter upstream of the device. The results demonstrate that a subcomponent of the dual modality sensor, an electrical resistance tomography (ERT) system, is able to visualise water continuous flow with WLR higher than 40%, providing good agreement with previous reports. The remaining subcomponent, the electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) system, is able to provide stable measurement during WLR from 0% to 90%, which is far beyond initial expectations and previous findings. Mean concentrations measured with the dual-modality system reveal the potential capability of the tomography system for phase fraction measurement. The visualisation results with the advanced data fusion method and mean concentration measurement verify the capability of the system in the application of gas-oil-water flow characterisation.

[1]  Mi Wang,et al.  Inverse solutions for electrical impedance tomography based on conjugate gradients methods , 2002 .

[2]  Lihui Peng,et al.  Image reconstruction algorithms for electrical capacitance tomography , 2003 .

[3]  H. McCann,et al.  Agile Sensing Systems for Tomography , 2011, IEEE Sensors Journal.

[4]  Kok Eng Kee,et al.  A Study of Flow Patterns and Surface Wetting in Gas-Oil-Water Flow , 2014 .

[5]  B. S. Hoyle,et al.  Engineering and application of a dual-modality process tomography system , 2007 .

[6]  Haiqing Li,et al.  A new dual-modality ECT/ERT technique based on C4D principle , 2015, 2015 IEEE International Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference (I2MTC) Proceedings.

[7]  Manuchehr Soleimani,et al.  Dual modality ECT–MIT multi-phase flow imaging , 2015 .

[8]  C. J. Kotre,et al.  EIT image reconstruction using sensitivity weighted filtered backprojection. , 1994, Physiological measurement.

[9]  Geoffrey F. Hewitt,et al.  Three-phase gas–liquid–liquid flows in the steady and transient states , 2005 .

[10]  Mi Wang,et al.  Visualization of Gas–Oil–Water Flow in Horizontal Pipeline Using Dual-Modality Electrical Tomographic Systems , 2017, IEEE Sensors Journal.

[11]  M Wang.  Industrial Tomography: Systems and Applications , 2015 .

[12]  Yousef Faraj,et al.  A new visualisation and measurement technology for water continuous multiphase flows , 2015 .

[13]  Wuqiang Yang,et al.  Measurement of multi-phase distribution using an integrated dual-modality sensor , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Workshop on Imaging Systems and Techniques.

[14]  J. Maxwell.  A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism , 1873, Nature.

[15]  Shihong Yue,et al.  Fuzzy clustering based ET image fusion , 2013, Inf. Fusion.

[16]  B. T. Hjertaker,et al.  Three-phase flow measurement in the petroleum industry , 2012 .

[17]  Uwe Hampel,et al.  Dual-modality wire-mesh sensor for the visualization of three-phase flows , 2015 .

[18]  H. I. Schlaberg,et al.  A novel tomographic sensing system for high electrically conductive multiphase flow measurement , 2010 .

[19]  Mi Wang,et al.  ELECTRICAL RESISTANCE TOMOGRAPHIC SENSING SYSTEMS FOR INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS , 1999 .

[20]  Wuqiang Yang,et al.  A dual-modality electrical tomography sensor for measurement of gas–oil–water stratified flows , 2015 .

[21]  S.-A. Tjugum,et al.  Multimodality tomography for multiphase hydrocarbon flow measurements , 2005, IEEE Sensors Journal.

[22]  Liang-Shih Fan,et al.  A Multimodal Tomography System Based on ECT Sensors , 2007, IEEE Sensors Journal.

[23]  Belur V. Dasarathy,et al.  Medical Image Fusion: A survey of the state of the art , 2013, Inf. Fusion.