Multiphase Gas Liquid Slug Flow Measurements Using Ultrasonic Doppler

摘要

The accurate measurement of multiphase flows of oil/water/gas is a critical element of oil exploration and production Thus, over the last three decades; the development and deployment of in-line multiphase flow metering systems has been a major focus worldwide. In this paper, an ultrasonic slug flow-metering concept has been proposed and investigated. It aims to measure the flow rates of the liquid and gas phases from ultrasonic measurements made in slug flow regime to obtain good measurement accuracy. This employs ultrasonic raw signal Doppler (with in house signal processing) method combined with a flash-mounted conductivity ring. This approach has been tested on water/air flows in a 50mm pipe diameter facility in the School of Engineering in Cranfield University. The water and gas flowrate measurements using the proposed technique were compared with a reference measurement and a good agreement between these two measurements was obtained with an error ±15% compared to a reference flowmeter. The gas measurement was within ±10% of the measurement made using a reference flowmeter.