Measuring the Taylor Bubble Length in a Two-Phase Flow using an Electrical Resistance Sensor and a High-Speed Camera

Abstract

The present research aims to investigate the two-phase air/water flow in a vertical pipe using an electrical resistance sensor and a high-speed camera. An electrical resistance sensor is designed and embedded in the inner wall of the tube. A flow pattern map is drawn at the height of 270 cm from the testbed inlet for 320 different phase velocities using a high-speed camera. By measuring the output voltage of the electrical resistance sensor and using the Maxwell relation, the volume fraction in bubbly and slug flow regimes are calculated for different phase velocities. The volume fraction values detected from the output signal of the electrical resistance sensor are compared with the results obtained from the high-speed camera images. The width of the output signal from the electrical resistance sensor indicates the length of the Taylor bubble. The output signal width is compared to the obtained Taylor bubble length from high-speed camera images, for several different velocities of the phases. It is noticed that at a constant velocity of the phases, the output signal width from the sensor is linearly related to the length of the Taylor bubble. The variations of the output signal width are plotted in terms of the ratio of the Taylor bubble length to the summation of air and water superficial velocities. By linear fitting of the available data, a novel equation is presented to calculate the Taylor bubble length in terms of the signal output from the electrical resistance sensor and the total superficial velocity of the phases.