Vibration sensor approaches for sand detection in oil–water–sand multiphase flow

• We introduce vibration approaches to monitor particles in multiphase flow.
• An impact part amplifies the particle signals in complex oil–water flow.
• Typical sand frequency band filter can minimize the flow background noise.
• A good correlation between vibration power spectrum and sand content is found.

The real-time measurement of solid phase in oil–water–sand multiphase flow is significant in production process control and reliable operations, especially for reasonable sanding in oilfield. Aiming to improve the existing limitations in solid particle detection of a liquid–solid system, a vibration detection device for liquid–solid flow has been developed and its evaluation test is conducted indoor. This paper illustrates the application of a special wideband vibration sensor to monitor sand–water and sand–oil–water flows in pipeline. In this work, a primary measuring instrument was firstly proposed and designed to amplify vibration signal caused by sand impacting so that it can be much easier to receive for the sensor. Time–frequency analysis method and a characteristic sand frequency band digital filter were proposed to enhance the ability of sand detection in heavy liquid flow background noise. The experimental investigation considered sand–water flow and sand–oil–water flow, both with sand content more than 0.3 wt.‰ and size less than 325 mesh. The experimental findings showed that there is an obvious correlation between vibration power spectrum amplitude and sand concentration. Accordingly, the vibration technology would be helpful to enhance the solid detection for the multiphase system.

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