In oil-gas-water three-phase flow, the presence of two physically distinct dispersed phases leads to complex interfacial effects and relative velocities between the phases, which poses a significant challenges for gas holdup measurements. In this paper, a novel gas holdup measurement based on flow structure detection is realized. Firstly, the effect of gas bubble diameter on ultrasonic attenuation was studied, and a gas bubble diameter-based ultrasonic gas holdup measurement model was proposed. According to the model's specifications, a combined measurement system consisting of pulse transmission ultrasonic sensor and bi-optical fiber probe sensor was built. The dynamic experiment of oil-gas-water three-phase flow was conducted on a simulated well installation to measure the gas holdup using the combined measurement system. The results suggest that the proposed ultrasonic-optical measurement system can attain a high level of measuring precision.
Keywords: Gas holdup; Oil-gas–water three-phase flow; Optical fiber; Ultrasonic sensor.
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