Study of bubble flow in an air-water two-phase flow by using Electrical Capacitance Tomography

Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) is an efficient and inexpensive type of Process Tomography, which is being widely used nowadays. It is a technique for obtaining information about the distribution of the contents of closed pipes or vessels by measuring variations in the dielectric properties of the material inside the vessel. An experimental study was conducted by producing two-phase bubble flow regime in a vertical online ECT column. By changing the flow rates of air and water, different bubble flow regimes were established in the test loop which is then compared with (a) the flow observed through transparent section of the column and (b) the flow regime map for two-phase bubble flow. This study also measures the values of raw capacitance and voltages of air and water flow. The raw data obtained from ECT images are analysed by using distribution models and MATLAB which is in good agreement with the experimental data.