Measurement of Oil-Gas–Water Flows Using a Distributed Conductance and Differential Pressure Dual-Modal Sensing System

This study proposes a distributed conductance and differential pressure dual-modal sensing system to reduce the reliance on a single mode on homogeneous flow patterns. The difficulty of estimating three-phase flow parameters for nonuniform, asymmetric profiles is solved. We design a three-sector multihighs electrode conductance sensor (TMECS). By averaging the results over three sectors, differences in kinematic wave velocity and water holdup information at different locations can be offset. Meanwhile, using distributed differential pressure sensors (DDPSs) reduces the uncertainty introduced by unilateral pressure measurement. By utilizing the holdups provided by the conductance modal to model the three-phase flow friction factors measured by the DDPS, the deviation for gas holdup is 6.09%. The superficial velocities are derived by fusing the individual phase holdups and mixture velocity given by the two modals and using the drift-flux model. The uncertainties of the superficial velocities of gas and oil are 1.79% and 0.36%, respectively.