High-resolution gas–oil two-phase flow visualization with a capacitance wire-mesh sensor

The application of a novel wire-mesh sensor based on electrical capacitance (permittivity) measurements for the investigation of gas–oil two-phase flow in a vertical pipe of 67 mm diameter under industrial operating conditions is reported in this article. The wire-mesh sensor employed can be operated at up to 5000 frames per second acquisition speed and at a spatial resolution of 2.8 mm. By varying the gas and liquid flow rates, different flow patterns, such as bubbly, slug and churn flow, were produced and investigated. From the images of gas void fraction distribution, quantitative flow structure information, such as time series of cross-sectional void fraction, radial void fraction profiles and bubble size distributions, was extracted by special image-processing algorithms.