Images Analysis of Horizontal Two-Phase Slug Flows

Multi-phase flow measurements are very common in industrial applications especially of the oil and gas industry. In order to study such pattern one can apply many different techniques such as capacitive probes, X-ray and gamma ray tomography, ultrasound transducers, wire-mesh sensors and high speed videometry. This article describes experimental study of water-air slug in horizontal pipes through non-intrusive image analysis technique. A flow test section comprising of a pipe of 26 mm internal diameter and 9 m long was employed to generate slug flows under controlled conditions. The behavior of the flow was studied using gas and liquid velocities between 0.3 m/s and 2 m/s with 6000 images (500×232 pixels) for each case. The algorithm comprises the automatic analysis of a sequence of frames in MatLab to measure flow characteristics such as Taylor bubble velocity and frequency applying morphological treatment. Finally, the parameters measured through the high speed videometry were compared with theoretical predictions showing that such method can be used to validate other types of sensors in experimental conditions.