An inner-out conductance ring sensor for phase fraction measurement

Two-phase flow is a frequently encountered and widely existed flow phenomenon in industrial processes. Accurate measurement on its process parameters has always remained a challenge for both the academic and engineering world. An inner-out conductance ring sensor is proposed to measure the dispersion phase fraction in an annular flow channel. The sensing field distribution along with the sensitivity distribution has been numerically studied through simulations, two typical phase distributions of stratified flow and bubbly flow are simulated for phase concentration measurement analysis of the inner-out conductance ring sensor. A prototype of this sensor is fabricated and tested in static experiments. The experiment results demonstrate that the proposed conductance sensor outputs a voltage directly proportional to the phase fraction within the target annular channel. The deviation of experiment measurement to numerical work is analyzed.