International Society for Industrial Process Tomography

Electromagnetic Flow Tomography for Imaging Asymmetric Single- and Multiphase Flows

M. Vauhkonen*, A. Hänninen and O. Lehtikangas

University of Eastern Finland, Department of Applied Physics, POB 1627, FI-70211 Kuopio, Finland

*Email: marko.vauhkonen@uef.fi

ABSTRACT

Conventional electromagnetic flow meters (EMFMs) have successfully been used in a variety of industries for measuring volumetric flow rates of single-phase conductive fluids. Although the conventional EMFMs have proven accurate for axisymmetric single-phase flows, in the cases of asymmetric or multiphase flows EMFMs can give severely erroneous volumetric flow rate values. In recent years, new approaches for measuring asymmetric flow fields based on novel electromagnetic flow meters have been developed. These new electromagnetic flow tomography (EMFT) approaches are capable of imaging asymmetric flow fields in conductive single- and multiphase flows. In this paper, we show experimental results of our newly developed EMFT system in the cases of symmetric and asymmetric single-and two-phase flows. In single-phase flow, tap water of conductivity 0.2 mS cm⁻¹ was used and in two-phase flows, water and PVC balls or water and colza oil were studied. From the experiments, it can be concluded that the proposed EMFT system can reliably reconstruct asymmetric water flows as well as solid-water and oil-water two-phase flows in laboratory environment.

Keywords asymmetric velocity field, electromagnetic flow meter, electromagnetic flow tomography, inverse problems, multiphase flow

Industrial Application oil and gas, mineral engineering