Estimation of in-tube oil film thickness using electrical capacitance tomography

Author(s):  
Ziqiang Cui ◽  
Huaxiang Wang ◽  
Chengyi Yang ◽  
Yanbin Xu
2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziqiang Cui ◽  
Chengyi Yang ◽  
Benyuan Sun ◽  
Huaxiang Wang

Abstract In air/oil lubrication systems, the flow parameters, e.g., flow pattern, liquid film thickness, and air/oil flow rate, are of great importance to the transportation efficiency. In most cases, the on-going two-phase flow is annular flow with the oil moving along the tube wall and the air travelling at high speed in the center. This usually results in the formation of a thin oil film, the thickness of which is a key parameter determining the efficiency of the lubrication system. As the oil film thickness of the on-going air/oil flow varies dynamically, there is actually no applicable method for a non-intrusive test. In this paper, the use of electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) to investigate the air/oil flow has been studied. Capacitance measurements are made from an externally mounted electrode array in a non-invasive and non-intrusive manner. Both average and distributed oil film thicknesses can be calculated from the reconstructed ECT images. Simulation and experimental results show that the ECT technique can provide satisfactory results of online oil film thickness estimation


2015 ◽  
Vol 77 (28) ◽  
Author(s):  
MT Masturah ◽  
MHF Rahiman ◽  
Zulkarnay Zakaria ◽  
AR Rahim ◽  
NM Ayob

This paper discussed the design–functionality and application of Flexible Electrical Capacitance Tomography sensor (FlexiECT). The sensors consist of 12 electrodes allocated surrounding the outer layer of the pipeline. The sensor is designed in such that the flexibility features suit the applications in the pipeline of multiple size. This paper also discussed the preliminary result of FlexiECT applications in fluid imaging by identifying the percentage of two mixing fluids.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Kandlbinder-Paret ◽  
Alice Fischerauer ◽  
Gerhard Fischerauer

Abstract In electrical capacitance tomography (ECT), the resolution of the reconstructed permittivity distribution improves with the number of electrodes used whereas the number of capacitance measurements and the measurement time increases with the number of electrodes. To cope with this tradeoff, we present a phantom-dependent adaptation scheme in which coarse measurements are performed with terminal electrodes interconnected to form a synthetic electrode ring with fewer but larger electrodes. The concept was tested by observing the sloshing of water inside a pipe. We compare the reconstructed results based on eight synthetic electrodes, on 16 elementary electrodes, and on the adaptation scheme involving both the eight synthetic electrodes and some of the elementary capacitances. The reconstruction used the projected Landweber algorithm for capacitances determined by a finite-element simulation and for measured capacitances. The results contain artefacts attributed to the influence of the high permittivity of water compared to the low permittivity of the pipe wall. The adaptation scheme leads to nearly the same information as a full measurement of all 120 elementary capacitances but only requires the measurement of 30 % fewer capacitances. By detecting the fill level using a tomometric method, it can be determined within an uncertainty of 5 % FS.


Author(s):  
Lifeng Zhang

The tomographic imaging of process parameters for oil-gas-water three-phase flow can be obtained through different sensing modalities, such as electrical resistance tomography (ERT) and electrical capacitance tomography (ECT), both of which are sensitive to specific properties of the objects to be imaged. However, it is hard to discriminate oil, gas and water phases merely from reconstructed images of ERT or ECT. In this paper, the feasibility of image fusion based on ERT and ECT reconstructed images was investigated for oil-gas-water three-phase flow. Two cases were discussed and pixel-based image fusion method was presented. Simulation results showed that the cross-sectional reconstruction images of oil-gas-water three-phase flow can be obtained using the presented methods.


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (15) ◽  
pp. 3416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Kowalska ◽  
Robert Banasiak ◽  
Andrzej Romanowski ◽  
Dominik Sankowski

Presently, Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) is positioned as a relatively mature and inexpensive tool for the diagnosis of non-conductive industrial processes. For most industrial applications, a hand-made approach for an ECT sensor and its 3D extended structure fabrication is used. Moreover, a hand-made procedure is often inaccurate, complicated, and time-consuming. Another drawback is that a hand-made ECT sensor’s geometrical parameters, mounting base profile thickness, and electrode array shape usually depends on the structure of industrial test objects, tanks, and containers available on the market. Most of the traditionally fabricated capacitance tomography sensors offer external measurements only with electrodes localized outside of the test object. Although internal measurement is possible, it is often difficult to implement. This leads to limited in-depth scanning abilities and poor sensitivity distribution of traditionally fabricated ECT sensors. In this work we propose, demonstrate, and validate experimentally a new 3D ECT sensor fabrication process. The proposed solution uses a computational workflow that incorporates both 3D computer modeling and 3D-printing techniques. Such a 3D-printed structure can be of any shape, and the electrode layout can be easily fitted to a broad range of industrial applications. A developed solution offers an internal measurement due to negligible thickness of sensor mount base profile. This paper analyses and compares measurement capabilities of a traditionally fabricated 3D ECT sensor with novel 3D-printed design. The authors compared two types of the 3D ECT sensors using experimental capacitance measurements for a set of low-contrast and high-contrast permittivity distribution phantoms. The comparison demonstrates advantages and benefits of using the new 3D-printed spatial capacitance sensor regarding the significant fabrication time reduction as well as the improvement of overall measurement accuracy and stability.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document