Void fraction measurement of slug flow using electromagnetic wave phase sensor based on optimized hybrid dielectric constant

The void fraction is one of the basic parameters to study the gas-liquid two-phase flow, which has great significance to the transportation of oil pipelines and the design of nuclear reactor cooling towers. However, due to the complex and variable nature of gas-liquid two-phase flow, accurately measurement of the void fraction has remained a challenging task in both scientific research and industrial applications. According to the principle of electromagnetic wave propagation, a coaxial line phase sensor was designed, a hybrid dielectric constant model based on the homogeneous flow was established and a void fraction based on hybrid dielectric constant model was proposed. The experiments were carried out on the high-precision gas-liquid two-phase flow simulation experimental setup at Hebei University, China (70 data points), and the void fraction model was inspected and verified. Five typical hybrid dielectric constant correlations were compared. Introducing the frequency weight, optimizing the hybrid dielectric constant model based on the Series – Parallel correlation, a new void fraction prediction correlation of slug flow was proposed and evaluated. The results indicated that the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of the new void fraction correlation is 1.02 % and the all of the relative errors are within ±5 % error band.