Slurry transport has been a progressive technology for transporting a huge amount of solid materials across the world in both, long distance and short commodity pipelines. The occurrence of separation and slippage of the constituent phases within the pipeline make these flows unpredictable and time dependent. Therefore, it is paramount for the operator of slurry pipelines to monitor and measure the flow continuously, particularly from the local point of view. Undoubtedly, the measurement of local parameters governing the flow, requires an instrument that provides high temporal resolution. Besides, since each phase has different behaviour and flow characteristics within the pipe, it is enormously difficult to measure the flow parameters of each phase using only one conventional flow meter. Thus, a second auxiliary sensor is required to develop a compact and multiphase flow meter.
This project proposes a new automated online slurry measurement, visualisation and characterization technique, in which a high performance dual-plane Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) system is employed with a capability of acquiring data at a rate of 1000 dual-frames per second. It also proposes an ERT based technique, which combines the ERT and an Electromagnetic Flow meter (EMF), to measure volumetric flow rate of each phase, and thus the total slurry volumetric flow rate. The ERT is further combined with the cross-correlation technique to estimate and image the axial solid’s velocity distribution, through which the transient phenomena of horizontal flow regimes can be visualised. The ERT is used for estimation of several parameters of stratified flow. The development of a novel automated technique for recognition of horizontal slurry flow regimes is also described. A series of experiments were carried out on horizontal and upward vertical sand-water flow through a pilot scale flow system with 50 mm ID pipeline. Two sands, medium and coarse, were employed in two throughput concentrations (2% and 10%) within the range of transport velocities 1.2-5.0 m/s. The solids volumetric concentration and velocity, along with slurry volumetric flow rate are compared with the corresponding results obtained from a sampling vessel.
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