Publikationsrepositorium - Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf

In the design of wells and risers it is important to understand the behaviour of the gas/liquid flows. The very complex nature of the interface between the phases can make observations very difficult with interfaces near the wall obscuring the phenomena occurring at the pipe centre. Here, two tomographic techniques are applied to the flow in a 67 mm internal diameter vertical pipe. One is Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) electrode system driven by Tomoflow electronic and employs two rings of eight electrodes each mount on the outside of the non-conducting pipe wall. Measurement of the capacitance between each electrode pair in a ring yield matrices of data which can yield time varying cross-sectionally resolved gas fraction and velocities data. The other technique, usually known as the Wire Mesh Sensor (WMS) approach developed at Forschungszentrum Rossendorf-Dresden, which had been previously applied and used in a two-phase flow facility at Nottingham for air/water, was used. In the present experiments a new, capacitance based version has been utilised. This employs two arrays of 24 wires stretched along regularly spaced chords. The second array is a few millimetres downstream of the first and positioned orthogonally to it. One array acts as the exciter and the other as the detector. Each exciter wire is pulsed in turn and the signal reaching every detector wire is monitored. The entire cross section is sampled at 1 kHz. Simultaneous measurements were made with the two techniques for gas superficial velocities of 0.05 – 4.7 m/s and liquid superficial velocities of 0 – 0.7 m/s with air and a silicone oil as the fluids. Bubble, slug and churn flows were identified from the characteristic signatures of the Probability Density Functions of the cross-sectionally averaged void fraction. Three-dimensional gas fraction data can be extracted. In addition, the detailed shape of individual large bubbles has been extracted. The output of both instruments show clearly that the shapes of the large bubbles in slug flow are distinctly different from the smooth bullet-shaped objects observed in smaller diameter pipes and which are sketched in text books. In this larger diameter pipe, the interface is much more disturbed. They might be described as wrinkled. In addition, flow can be classified according to the sizes of bubbles present. Distributions of bubble sizes are presented and the fractions of gas flowing in different bubble sizes classes quantified.