Flow Measurement and Instrumentation 15 (2004) 317324 www.elsevier.

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Capacitance sensor for void fraction measurement in water/steam ows

A. Jaworek , A. Krupa, M. Trela
Institute of Fluid Flow Machinery, Polish Academy of Sciences, PO Box 621, Fiszera 14, 80-952 Gdansk, Poland Received 17 December 2003; received in revised form 25 February 2004; accepted 16 April 2004

Abstract A capacitance sensor operating at RF range for void fraction measurements was developed. Two electrodes of the capacitor are mounted on the outer side of pipe walls. The variations in the percentage of phases in two-phase ow cause changes of the equivalent permittivity of the dielectric between the electrodes. The capacitor is connected in a resonant circuit of an oscillator tuned to high frequency of 80 MHz. The changes of frequency generated by the oscillator are the measure of the void fraction in the two-phase ow. An eight-channel system with capacitance sensors of this type was used for determination of the phase conversion along a steam injector. # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Two-phase ow; Void fraction measurement; Steam injector; Capacitance sensor

1. Introduction Two-phase ows are frequently met in many technical and energy conversion processes. A variety of methods have been designed for in situ determining the gas volume fraction in two-phase ow without distorting the ow, or the need of using a separation technique. The radiation methods are based on X- or c-ray extinction, and allow measurement of area void fraction in a selected cross section of a pipe. Electrical sensors measure the permittivity or resistance of the liquid phase, which signicantly diers from that of voids. Admittance sensors measure the conductivity between two parallel wires stretched across the pipe. Admittance probe can be applied for slug or bubble ows when the size of bubble is larger than the wire space. The advantage of such devices is their high sensitivity. This type of probe, however, distorts the ow and can change the ow pattern. Electrical capacitance sensors were developed for non-invasive monitoring of phase percentage in gas liquid two-phase ows in pipelines. The capacitance
Corresponding author. Tel.: +48-58-346-0881; fax: +48-58-3416144. E-mail address: jaworek@imp.gda.pl (A. Jaworek).

sensors measure the phase percentage determining an electrical capacitance between one or more pairs of electrodes mounted inside or outside of the pipe walls. The capacitance can vary in the range of 0.110 pF, but in order to achieve high measurement sensitivity and good signal-to-noise ratio the eect of stray capacitance must be minimised. The output signal is not proportional to the phase volume percentage, and also depends on the ow pattern, and therefore the calibration of the sensor is needed. This type of device was used for gasliquid systems or measurements of concentration of solid particles in gas [110]. The capacitance-sensor techniques were reviewed by Huang et al. [5]. The capacitance sensors are successfully used in the capacitance tomography, a technique that is able to determine the ow pattern of gassolid, gasliquid or two-liquid mixture in real time [1116]. The single capacitance sensor allows only rough determination of the phases percentage without any information on the ow pattern. However, in contrast to the capacitance tomography the single capacitance sensor is simple in design and in operation. It does not require a complex software solving an inverse problem, and is much cheaper.

0955-5986/$ - see front matter # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.owmeasinst.2004.04.002

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This paper presents a capacitance sensor used for void fraction measurements in water/steam two-phase ow. This device diers from those presented in the literature in that it is connected in a resonant circuit of an electronic oscillator tuned to radio frequency. Variations in the capacitance of the sensor caused by void percentage change within the electrodes lead to frequency deviations of the oscillator. These deviations are used for determination of the void fraction in the ow. A set of such sensors was used for determining the void fraction distribution along a nozzle in the labscale steam injector at the Institute of Fluid Flow Machinery.

2. Sensor theory and characteristics The capacitance sensor presented in this paper determines a mean value of phase percentage in two-phase ow. The measurements of capacitance of a capacitor lled with a conducting liquid, like water, are dicult because equivalent resistance of the liquid, which is usually low, is connected in parallel with capacitive component of the admittance, provided the water component is the continuous phase in the mixture. For low frequencies, this resistance is like a short-circuit to the capacitance. To cut-o the eect of the resistance, the sensor admittance has to be measured in high frequency range. Commercially available measuring devices are usually used for capacitance determination of capacitance sensors. Stott et al. [2] tested external and internal capacitance of a sensor but only for low frequency of 1.6 kHz. Abouelwafa and Kendall [1] used a radio-frequency bridge operating at the frequency of 1 MHz, however, it was still too low to overcome the liquid conductance component of the sensor capacitance. Huang et al. [4] excited the capacitance sensor with frequency of up to 5 MHz. The frequency of 80 MHz for excitation of a capacitance sensor used in laboratory tests of void fraction measurement was proposed by Jaworek [7]. The method of oscillation frequency deviation was used by the author for determination of the sensor capacitance. The frequency of 80 MHz was also used for determination of capacitance variation in this paper. At this frequency the reciprocal of the time constant of electrical relaxation processes in the liquid (tap water) dened as qe (q is the liquid resistivity, e its absolute permittivity) is a few times lower than the excitation frequency. This reduces the eect of liquid conductance on the measuring results. For example, when the resistivity of tap v water is q 25 Xm at the temperature of 20 C, and its electrical permittivity e 7 1010 C=V m [17] then the reciprocal of the time constant is 1=s 8:9 MHz. The capacitance sensor used in the experiments consisted of a pair of brass electrodes made in the form of

strips of width of 10 mm, which were mounted around the outside wall of a pipe made of polycarbonate. The cross section of the pipe and the sensor, and also an electrical scheme of the measuring circuit are shown in Fig. 1. The measurements of void fraction with capacitance sensor are quasi-local, i.e., the sensor determines the percentage of both phases not strictly in a selected cross section of the pipe but in a certain volume, based on the electrodes height. The exact boundary of this volume cannot be precisely drawn due to fringe eects. To minimise the non-local eects, the height of the electrodes measured along the pipe should be as short as possible, but the eect of the fringe eld cannot be eliminated. Short electrodes have, however, small capacitance and low sensitivity, and in this case a compromise is needed. The sensor was shielded to minimise the distortion eects due to outer objects and electromagnetic elds. The shield dimensions should be as large as possible in order to minimise stray capacitance. In a simple theoretical model, the complex distribution of liquid and void fractions in a pipe can be represented by a lumped capacitance Ce of unknown relative permittivity ee of the medium in the pipe. The equivalent capacitance in this system is the imaginary

Fig. 1.

Electrical scheme of the measuring circuit.

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part of the eective impedance of the liquid within the pipe in series with two virtual capacitances 2Cw between water and electrodes, with the pipe walls as dielectric (Fig. 1). The parallel resistance Req of water within the pipe was assumed to be negligible. The conductance of the polycarbonate tube can also be neglected because it is a perfect dielectric. The eective capacitance of the sensor is: Ce Cw 1 Ce Cw The capacitance Ce is an idealised capacitance, which varies due to phase percentage changes. Other stray capacitances including that to a grounded shield and grounded elements are represented by Cc. Also the capacitance due to fringe eects. i.e., that generated by eld lines not penetrating the mixture can be included to Cc. The capacitance variations caused by the changes in phase percentage are measured by frequency method. The electrodes are connected as a capacitor in a LC-resonant circuit operating in a circuit of a radiofrequency (RF) oscillator. The RF oscillator is very sensitive to the capacitance variations causing frequency deviations. These deviations can be easily determined by comparison of the actual frequency of the oscillator with a reference frequency. The oscillator and reference generator were placed on a printed circuit board close to the electrodes to minimise stray capacitance and reduce external distortions. Miniature dimensions of this device were achieved by using surface mounted devices. The dierence frequency was next transmitted to a microprocessor system measuring low frequency in up to 4 MHz range. The electrical capacitance Ce depends on the eective permittivity, ee , of the medium between the electrodes. When the proportion between the liquid phase of high relative permittivity and gas phase of dielectric constant equal to 1 changes, the eective capacitance varies providing information on the gas/liquid content. The problem of eective permittivity or dielectric constant of a medium composed of two immiscible dielectrics of dierent electric properties was studied by many authors. Four models can be applicable to the situation of two-phase ows (cf. Bruggeman [18]): C 1. Plate voids placed perpendicularly to the electrodes in a continuous medium, which can be reduced to two virtual capacitances connected in parallel, one of permittivity of water and the other of gaseous phase, in which eective relative permittivity was given by Wiener formula [18]: ee dg eg dl el 2

2. Plate voids placed parallel to the electrodes in a continuous medium, which can be reduced to two virtual capacitances connected in series, also proposed by Wiener [18]: ee 1 dg =eg dl =el 3

3. A continuous medium (water) with cylindrical voids placed parallel to the electrodes, which could be a model of annular ow [18]: q dg dl eg el dg dl 2 eg el 2 4eg el ee 2 4 4. A continuous medium with spherical voids, which could be a model of bubble ow [18]:
ee 2dg eg dl el dg el dl eg q 2dg eg dl el dg el dl eg 2 8eg el 4

5
For un-ordered plate voids, Bruggeman proposed a formula for relative permittivity as a geometric mean of (2) and (3): s dg eg dl el ee 6 dg =eg dl =el All models of eective relative permittivity for a gas water mixture are shown in Fig. 2a as a function of void fraction. The model based on two parallel-capacitances gives permittivity proportional to the components fraction. Other models are non-linear, and the permittivity is lower than that for the parallel-capacitance model. The equivalent capacitance of the mixture between the electrodes can be presented as a certain function of the relative permittivity ee of the medium: Ce Ce0 f ee 7

where Ce0 is the equivalent capacitance for a 1, i.e., for the pipe without water inside. The angular resonance frequency of the oscillator, in general, is: x2 1 LC 8

where L is the inductance of the resonant circuit, C is the total capacitance in the resonant circuit comprising the capacitance of the sensor. The capacitance C can be written as C Ce 1 Cc 1 Ce =Cw 9

wheredg, and dl are gas and liquid fractions, respectively (dg dl 1), eg and el are the relative permittivities of the gas and liquid, respectively.

where Cc is additional (for example a trimmer used for

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Fig. 2. (a) Eective relative permittivity of two-phase mixture determined from models (26)). (b) Relative frequency deviations of an oscillator for dierent eective permittivity models.

tuning the resonant circuit) and the stray capacitance of the whole circuit in parallel (cf. Fig. 1). Taking into account (7) and (9) in (8) the resonance frequency is: x2 1 LCc 1 Ce0 1 f ee 1 1 Ce0 =Cw f ee Cc deviations 10 are

of the oscillator is:

x2 1 LCc 1 Ce0 1 a el 1 a 1 1 Ce0 =Cw a el 1 a Cc 13

The relative angular frequency determined from the equation: xg x 1 x=xg xg xl 1 xl =xg

11

in which xg is the angular frequency for the pipe free of water (air only) i.e., for a 1, and xl for the pipe totally lled with water, when a 0. All models of eective permittivity, given by Eqs. (26), were tested, and relative frequency deviations for the same values of other capacitances are presented in Fig. 2b. It will be shown in next section that only parallel-capacitance model ts the experimental data, while other permittivity approximations give quite unreasonable results. For low values of void fraction, up to about a 20%, parallel-capacitances, sphericaland cylindrical-void models give similar results. For the serial-capacitances model, the permittivity and relative frequency deviations change too fast in the low void fraction range. The parallel-capacitances model will, therefore, be used in the following, and the eective relative permittivity of the liquidgas mixture will be approximated by Wiener formula (2). For eg 1, the equivalent capacitance Ce is: Ce Ce0 a el 1 a 12 where a is the void fraction. This model is equivalent to two lumped capacitances in parallel, one containing gas as the dielectric, and the second lled with water. The resonance frequency (10)

Characteristics of the capacitance sensor are non-linear, and calibration is required for determination of the relation between the frequency deviations and void fraction. The calibration curve was obtained for the bubble ow, and for annular ow. The bubble-ow void fraction was obtained only up to 15% in these experiments by injecting gas bubbles on a lower part of the pipeline. The average gas content inside the pipe for bubbles owing upwards was determined from an increase in the water level in a measuring cylinder on which the electrodes were mounted. Cylindrically shaped voids simulating annular ow were obtained by placing end-closed glass pipes co-axially into the pipeline lled with water. Frequency deviations for these measurements are plotted in Fig. 3. There is a little difference between bubble ow and simulated annular ow. For computational purposes, the calibration data can be approximated by the following polynomial of 6th order: df 12:927a6 26:636a5 19:361a4 5:0284a3 0:1129a2 0:2641a 1 14

where df is the relative frequency deviation dened as df fg f fg fl 15

This line is shown in Fig. 3 as continuous line. The theoretical curve was also plotted in this gure. All capacitances in (13) cannot be exactly determined, and the frequency deviations (11) can be predicted theoretically only with a certain error. In the system used,

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Fig. 3.

Relative frequency deviation vs. void fraction (continuous line in the 6th order polynomial approximation).

the pipe wall capacitance Cw was estimated to Cw 5 pF, the equivalent capacitance for a 1 to Ce0 0:5 pF, and the additional capacitance Cc 10 pF. The capacitance Cw was measured between the sensor electrodes after placing a metal sheet onto the inner pipe wall. The capacitance Ce was eliminated by this way. The capacitance Cc was estimated by measuring frequency deviations after replacing the sensor by lumped capacitances of known values. The relative frequency deviations were determined from Eq. (11) and obtained curve is shown in Fig. 3 as dashed line. The dierence between the experimental and theoretical results is not very large, and can be explained by an eect of stray capacitance and water conductance on frequency deviations.

3. Experiments The area void fraction in a certain cross section of a pipe is dened as the ratio of the surface occupied by voids to the surface of the cross section of the pipe: a2 Svoid 16 S The volume void fraction in a certain segment of a pipe is the ratio of the volume occupied by voids to the total volume of the segment: a3

Vvoid 17 V The capacitance sensor under consideration measures only the volume void fraction because of the fringe eects in a capacitor with wide-spaced electrodes. The volume of the segment can, however, not be determined unambiguously. The characteristics of the

sensor were determined by measurements of frequency response of the oscillator for dierent void percentage. The capacitance sensors of this type were used for measurement of void fraction in selected cross sections of a supercritical steam injector. The experimental stand is schematically shown in Fig. 4. Steam injector is a device in which kinetic energy of steam is used for water suction. The steam injector consists of a steam nozzle, mixing chamber and diuser [19]. Two pipe installations can be distinguished in the scheme: the water and the steam. Superheated steam owing through the Laval-type nozzle expands to supersonic velocity that causes low static pressure at the inlet to the mixing chamber. The pressure below atmospheric draws the water through the annular slot surrounding the steam nozzle into the mixing chamber, where the steam transfers its momentum and heat to the water. Due to the shock wave, which develops in the diuser downstream of the throat, the two-phase ow of water and steam is compressed, and the steam condenses, so that only water leaves the injector. The steam injector was equipped with thermocouples, pressure transducers, and void-fraction capacitance sensors for determination of thermodynamic parameters of the phase exchange processes (cf. Fig. 4). The pipe in this stand was made of polycarbonate to eliminate screening eect that could be caused by a metal pipe. The pipe was placed vertically, with the steam injector facing downwards from the upper part of the mixing chamber. A photograph of one of the sensors with electronics is shown in Fig. 5. The void fraction in this system was determined in four cross sections of the mixing chamber and four in diuser. Schematic diagram of microprocessor controlled measuring system for the capacitance sensor is presented in Fig. 6. Signal of high frequency Uisin(xt)

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Fig. 4. Scheme of the experimental stand for investigation of supercritical steam injector.

Fig. 5. A photograph of capacitance sensor with electronics.

from each sensor was mixed with the reference frequency signal U0sin(x0t): um t Ui U0 cosx0 xt cosx0 xt 2 18

Fig. 6. Schematic diagram of the measuring system for the capacitance sensors.

The product was ltered by a low-pass electronic lter to obtain low frequency signal: uout t U sinx0 xt 19

The frequency deviations were measured by a microprocessor system and converted to digital signal, which is next stored and processed by a computer. The void fraction in each cross section of the pipe was determined from the frequency deviations by the computer.

Originally developed program was used for measurement control and data processing. An example of void fraction measurements during a 3-h experiment with eight-channel system is presented in Fig. 7. The variation in signal levels is due to changes in experimental conditions such as ow rates, temperatures and pressures. A peak occurring in the channel-2 was the result of unexpected ooding with water one of the electrode pair outside the pipe. Void fraction distribution along the mixing chamber diuser system, starting from the mixing chamber inlet,

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Fig. 7. Variations of void fraction in a 3-h experiment at the steam injector stand. Changes in void fraction refer to dierent experimental conditions such as ow rate, temperature, and pressure.

was determined from the data recorded in Fig. 7, and are shown in Fig. 8. The experimental conditions for this plot are listed in Table 1. The actual frequency deviations were normalised to the maximum frequency

dierence, xg xl (cf. Eq. (11)). The reference frequency xl, with whole steam injector ooded with water, was determined just after all measurements in the series were completed, and the water temperature was as that during the measurements. It was necessary because water changes its properties (conductivity, permittivity) with temperature [17]. The ood-frequency measured in these conditions is more appropriate than that determined before the injector system was running, and water temperature was lower. The measurement accuracy by this method is estimated to be of the order of magnitude of 10%.

4. Conclusions A method of void fraction measurement in twophase ow based on measurement of frequency deviations generated by a high frequency oscillator with a capacitance sensor in its circuit was presented in this paper. The capacitance variations due to percentage changes of two phases were measured in a LC-resonant circuit, which is very sensitive to small capacitance changes. Characteristics of the capacitance sensor are non-linear, and calibration is needed for determination of the relation between the frequency deviations and void fraction. The frequency deviations were determined by continuous comparison of generated frequency with a reference frequency of a quartz generator. The dierence frequency was measured by a microprocessor system and converted to digital signal, which was next stored by a computer. The system was designed for determination of steam content in a water-vapour twophase ow along a supercritical steam injector. This is a simple, low cost and non-invasive method, which allows determining void fraction and avoiding ow distortion because no mechanical element is put into the

Fig. 8. Examples of void fraction distribution along the steam injector.

Table 1 Measuring conditions to Fig. 8 Line no. Steam temperature v ( C) 142 142 142 Steam ow rate (kg/h) 132 134 132 Water ow rate (kg/h) 3400 2840 3400 Throat pressure (kPa) 13.9 64.1 130.3

1 2 3

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