Abstract The development of adaptive real-time flow velocity estimation algorithms for two-phase flows can contribute to monitoring the pipelines of various complex processes, such as energy, chemical, petroleum and nuclear industries. Among the different non-invasive tomography techniques, electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) is gaining increasing attention for its potential use in real-time imaging and characterization of multiphase flow systems. The nature of ECT signals for two-phase flows can significantly degrade the velocity estimation process with cross-correlation approaches. We address the unique challenges of such signals and propose a preprocessing technique to improve the performance and robustness of the velocity estimation algorithm. Two adaptive filters are used to estimate the velocity of a two-phase type flow. A least mean square (LMS) and a fast block LMS (FBLMS) are used to model the time delay between the two signals captured by the twin sensor (ECT). Performance of the proposed technique is assessed by applying it to ECT data obtained from an experimental flow rig. The computed estimates are then compared with the calculated velocity from tracking motion of bubbles captured by a high speed camera monitoring the two phase flow in the pipe. Results show that the proposed technique provides consistent results across various flow patterns, and is advantageous compared to cross-correlation based techniques, specially for chaotic flow conditions. Furthermore, the proposed estimation algorithms can be applied to other electric based tomographic techniques.

中文翻译：

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气/油两相流层析电容信号速度估计自适应滤波技术

摘要 两相流自适应实时流速估计算法的发展有助于监测能源、化工、石油和核工业等各种复杂过程的管道。在不同的非侵入性断层扫描技术中，电容断层扫描 (ECT) 因其在多相流系统的实时成像和表征中的潜在用途而越来越受到关注。两相流的 ECT 信号的性质会显着降低使用互相关方法的速度估计过程。我们解决了此类信号的独特挑战，并提出了一种预处理技术来提高速度估计算法的性能和鲁棒性。两个自适应滤波器用于估计两相流的速度。最小均方 (LMS) 和快速块 LMS (FBLMS) 用于模拟双传感器 (ECT) 捕获的两个信号之间的时间延迟。所提出的技术的性能是通过将其应用于从实验流动装置获得的 ECT 数据来评估的。然后将计算出的估计值与通过监控管道中两相流的高速摄像机捕获的气泡跟踪运动计算出的速度进行比较。结果表明，所提出的技术在各种流动模式下提供了一致的结果，并且与基于互相关的技术相比具有优势，特别是对于混沌流动条件。此外，所提出的估计算法可以应用于其他基于电的断层摄影技术。