Study of hysteresis effects and emulsion properties in watercut measurement using high speed multi-frequency impedance sensor

• The electrical response of an impedance based watercut metering device was studied.
• Mixture heterogeneity, emulsion properties and hysteresis effect were investigated.
• The uncertainty in watercut measurement in 0–100% range was obtained to be ±3%.
• This watercut meter is insensitive to mixture heterogeneity and phase distribution.
• Hysteresis effect does not have significant effect on the watercut measurement.

Oil and water mixtures are present in many applications, specifically in upstream oil production. To investigate oil–water mixture properties and to measure phase fractions, a watercut meter was developed that utilizes an electrical impedance measurement method. In this method, watercut is measured by using a newly developed algorithm that uses multiple frequencies to enhance the accuracy of the watercut measurements and to identify the mixture dispersion type. Electrical characteristics of the mixture were investigated by studying the effect of two factors, the emulsion properties and hysteresis effect. The dependency of the watercut meter response to the influencing factors was reduced by implementing the developed novel method. Using this method, the uncertainty in watercut measurement from 0% to 100% was obtained to be about ±3% regardless of phase distribution and droplet size.