Application of electrical resistance tomography for slug flow measurement in gas/liquid flow of horizontal pipe

It is important to study the slug flow in a gas/liquid flow to achieve an in-depth understanding of the mixture flow and optimization of industrial processes. This paper presents a study of the slug flow measurement in gas/liquid flow of horizontal pipe. The application of ERT for slug flow measurement is demonstrated and described, including the visualization of slug size and shape. A novel method to obtain the liquid slug velocity is put forward. Independent component analysis (ICA) method has been applied to extract the liquid slug information. A good agreement between the independent component with the maximal kurtosis and liquid slug fluctuation of slug flow is observed. Through correlating independent component with the maximal kurtosis from upstream and downstream planes, the mean velocity and the length of liquid slug have been obtained. The comparison between the mean velocity from the ERT system and CCD camera is presented. The experimental results show the method is reasonable for the slug flow measurement in horizontal pipe.