A new gas slug length measurement method of slug flow in small channels based on a contactless impedance detection sensor

Abstract

The gas slug length measurement of slug flow in small channels is of great importance for academic research and industrial applications. However, there exists a lack of effective methods. More research work should be undertaken. Based on a contactless impedance detection (CID) sensor, a new gas slug length measurement method of slug flow in small channels is proposed. According to many experimental results, in this work, the imaginary part of the impedance response signal is selected and its response curve (the $i_s$ curve) is investigated. With the $i_s$ curve, a feature $Q$, the ratio of the peak width at half-maximum ($w_h$) to the peak width at maximum ($w_0$) is extracted, and the gas slug length measurement model is developed. Experimental results show that the $i_s$ curve indeed contains valuable information of the gas slug length, and the proposed feature $Q$ is effective in presenting the gas slug length. Gas slug length measurement experiments show that the proposed method in small channels is effective, and the measurement accuracy is satisfactory.