Measurement of Interfacial Characteristics of Horizontal and Inclined Oil–Water Flows by Using Wire-Mesh Sensor

Lusheng Zhai, Jiawei Qiao, Wenhao Wang and Yuqing Wang
Additional contact information
Lusheng Zhai: School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
Jiawei Qiao: School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
Wenhao Wang: School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
Yuqing Wang: School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 18, 1-22

Abstract: Oil–water flows are widely encountered in petroleum, chemical, nuclear reactors, and other crucial industrial processes. Due to gravity and interaction between phases, horizontal and inclined oil–water two-phase flows are characterized by remarkable multi-scale structure characteristics, such as large-scale stratified interface and small-scale droplets entrainment. Moreover, a slight change in the pipe inclination will lead to significant changes in the local oil–water flow structures, which results in great challenges in the measurement of the interface structures. In this study, we design a 10 × 10 conductance wire-mesh sensor (WMS) to detect the interfacial characteristics of horizontal and inclined oil–water flows. Firstly, we carry out horizontal and inclined oil–water flow experiments. The influence of pipe inclinations on the flow transition boundary is analyzed. The three-dimensional (3D) structures of oil–water flows are visualized based on the WMS measurement response. Then, edge detection is implemented to process the two-dimensional (2D) flow images visualized by the WMS. The influence of complexly distributed droplets is effectively removed by using binary image morphological transformation and watershed algorithm, and thus, oil–water interface structures are accurately extracted. Finally, the influence of the oil–water flow conditions and pipe inclinations on the configuration, height, and length of the stratified interface are investigated.

Keywords: oil–water flow; horizontal and inclined pipes; conductance wire-mesh sensor; interfacial characteristics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/18/6638/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/18/6638/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:18:p:6638-:d:912178

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().