Three-phase Flow Pattern Recognition in Horizontal Pipelines using Electrical Capacitance Tomography

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Corlett, A.E.

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.

Keywords: electrical capacitance tomography, three-phase flow

Journal: Journal of Visualization, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 31-36, 1999