An on-line adaptive estimation method for water holdup measurement in oil–water two-phase flow with a conductance/capacitance sensor

Oil–water two-phase flow widely exists in industrial processes such as petroleum engineering and chemical engineering. Accurate and real-time measurement of water holdup is an important problem requiring urgent solutions. In this work, a conductance and capacitance combination sensor (CCCS) system with four conductance rings and two concave capacitance plates was validated for its measurement performance of in situ water holdup through dynamic experiments. An online adaptive weight Kalman estimation (OAWKE) fusion algorithm for the CCCS system is proposed to fuse the conductance measurement and capacitance measurement. The algorithm has fast and dynamic response for the water holdup measurement of oil–water two-phase flow and has improved measurement precision by the adaptive data fusion method. The OAWKE fusion algorithm also has the ability to deal with the abrupt change of water holdup during the measurement process. Therefore, in the low water conductivity condition (tap water), the CCCS system with the OAWKE fusion algorithm can dynamically estimate the real-time full range water holdup of oil–water two-phase flow, which has prospects in the petroleum industry. (paper)