Metrological evaluation of a 3D electrical capacitance tomography measurement system for two-phase flow fraction determination

The industrial diagnostic and monitoring systems still require new methods offering new possibilities of non-invasive observation and analysis of the two-phase gas–liquid mixture flows. This paper demonstrates a new measurement system dedicated for non-invasive void fraction calculation and flow structure identification in vertical and horizontal pipelines. The study of the metrological validation of the designed three-dimensional capacitance tomography measurement system is discussed here. This research includes the 3D ECT sensor structure optimization process, the metrological evaluation of the image reconstruction accuracy and the developed liquid void fraction calculation method efficiency, in comparison with other common techniques. As a result of the performed analysis the advantages of the designed 3D ECT measurement system for non-invasive real-time dynamic flow process identification were discussed. (paper)