Affiliations: National Engineering Laboratory, East Kilbride,
Glasgow, UK
Abstract: An experimental study was performed to evaluate the suitability of
using an electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) system to visualise three
component mixtures of crude oil, water and gas. The performance of the ECT
system was examined over a range of three-phase flow conditions and regimes.
The flow visualisations from the tomography system were compared with the
images filmed using a CCD camera aligned with a Perspex pipe section. Results
indicated that ECT was most successful in flow pattern identification for low
water fraction flows. However, slug and stratified regimes could be identified
for high water fraction flows. A critical factor in the quality and reliability
of the generated image was the image reconstruction scheme used.