Classifications

• • G—PHYSICS
  • G01—MEASURING; TESTING
  • G01N—INVESTIGATING OR ANALYSING MATERIALS BY DETERMINING THEIR CHEMICAL OR PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
  • G01N23/00—Investigating or analysing materials by the use of wave or particle radiation, e.g. X-rays or neutrons, not covered by groups G01N3/00 – G01N17/00, G01N21/00 or G01N22/00
  • G01N23/02—Investigating or analysing materials by the use of wave or particle radiation, e.g. X-rays or neutrons, not covered by groups G01N3/00 – G01N17/00, G01N21/00 or G01N22/00 by transmitting the radiation through the material
  • G01N23/06—Investigating or analysing materials by the use of wave or particle radiation, e.g. X-rays or neutrons, not covered by groups G01N3/00 – G01N17/00, G01N21/00 or G01N22/00 by transmitting the radiation through the material and measuring the absorption
  • G01N23/12—Investigating or analysing materials by the use of wave or particle radiation, e.g. X-rays or neutrons, not covered by groups G01N3/00 – G01N17/00, G01N21/00 or G01N22/00 by transmitting the radiation through the material and measuring the absorption the material being a flowing fluid or a flowing granular solid
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G01—MEASURING; TESTING
  • G01F—MEASURING VOLUME, VOLUME FLOW, MASS FLOW OR LIQUID LEVEL; METERING BY VOLUME
  • G01F1/00—Measuring the volume flow or mass flow of fluid or fluent solid material wherein the fluid passes through a meter in a continuous flow
  • G01F1/704—Measuring the volume flow or mass flow of fluid or fluent solid material wherein the fluid passes through a meter in a continuous flow using marked regions or existing inhomogeneities within the fluid stream, e.g. statistically occurring variations in a fluid parameter
  • G01F1/708—Measuring the time taken to traverse a fixed distance
  • G01F1/712—Measuring the time taken to traverse a fixed distance using auto-correlation or cross-correlation detection means
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G01—MEASURING; TESTING
  • G01F—MEASURING VOLUME, VOLUME FLOW, MASS FLOW OR LIQUID LEVEL; METERING BY VOLUME
  • G01F1/00—Measuring the volume flow or mass flow of fluid or fluent solid material wherein the fluid passes through a meter in a continuous flow
  • G01F1/74—Devices for measuring flow of a fluid or flow of a fluent solid material in suspension in another fluid
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G01—MEASURING; TESTING
  • G01N—INVESTIGATING OR ANALYSING MATERIALS BY DETERMINING THEIR CHEMICAL OR PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
  • G01N23/00—Investigating or analysing materials by the use of wave or particle radiation, e.g. X-rays or neutrons, not covered by groups G01N3/00 – G01N17/00, G01N21/00 or G01N22/00
  • G01N23/02—Investigating or analysing materials by the use of wave or particle radiation, e.g. X-rays or neutrons, not covered by groups G01N3/00 – G01N17/00, G01N21/00 or G01N22/00 by transmitting the radiation through the material
  • G01N23/06—Investigating or analysing materials by the use of wave or particle radiation, e.g. X-rays or neutrons, not covered by groups G01N3/00 – G01N17/00, G01N21/00 or G01N22/00 by transmitting the radiation through the material and measuring the absorption
  • G01N23/083—Investigating or analysing materials by the use of wave or particle radiation, e.g. X-rays or neutrons, not covered by groups G01N3/00 – G01N17/00, G01N21/00 or G01N22/00 by transmitting the radiation through the material and measuring the absorption the radiation being X-rays
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G01—MEASURING; TESTING
  • G01N—INVESTIGATING OR ANALYSING MATERIALS BY DETERMINING THEIR CHEMICAL OR PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
  • G01N33/00—Investigating or analysing materials by specific methods not covered by groups G01N1/00 - G01N31/00
  • G01N33/26—Oils; Viscous liquids; Paints; Inks
  • G01N33/28—Oils, i.e. hydrocarbon liquids
  • G01N33/2823—Raw oil, drilling fluid or polyphasic mixtures
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G01—MEASURING; TESTING
  • G01N—INVESTIGATING OR ANALYSING MATERIALS BY DETERMINING THEIR CHEMICAL OR PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
  • G01N2223/00—Investigating materials by wave or particle radiation
  • G01N2223/60—Specific applications or type of materials
  • G01N2223/635—Specific applications or type of materials fluids, granulates

Definitions

• the present invention relates to nonintrusive techniques which allow real-time measurements of multiphase mixture flow rate and composition, and more particularly the present invention relates to X-ray based flow meter with energy resolving matrix detector.
• the invention is concerned a real-time measurements of a mixture of liquid hydrocarbons, e.g. oil, water and gaseous hydrocarbons.
• the claimed invention is not limited to the application in the field of oil and gas business (liquids and gases), but is applicable to all cases of non-destructive testing where an unknown stream of substance is to be analyzed in terms of composition and velocities.
• Some other examples comprise: waste management - shredded trash on a conveyor belt and ore winning - processed ore in tubes (in a liquid) or on conveyor belts (in solid form)
• the demand for such a device is especially high in upstream oil and gas business. It is important to measure individual flow rates of multiphase flow components without the need to interrupt fluid flow or separate the phases during measurement.
• the section provides determining at least one characteristic of oil well effluent constituted by multiphase fluid which typically comprises three phases: two liquid phases, crude oil and water, plus a hydrocarbon gas phase.
• the characteristics in question are the proportions of the component phases, including the water content of the liquid phase, and the flow-rate values - the total flow rate and the flow rates of the various phases.
• Prior-art devices attempt to utilize differences in the absorption of X-rays or Gamma-rays by the oil, water, and gas components of the multiphase mixture. As is well- known by persons skilled in the art, such prior-art devices have limited accuracy, particularly in the case of gas fractions above 90%, a common situation in real-world applications.
• US 6,097,786 discloses method and apparatus for characterizing a multiphase mixture by irradiating the mixture with X-rays, collecting the photons that emanate from the mixture in response to the irradiation, generating a signal responsive to the aggregate energy of the collected photons, and analyzing the signal to characterize the mixture.
• the mixture is irradiated by repetitively pulsing an X-ray tube and the photons are collected using a multi-layer detector.
• the method and apparatus may be used to determine the flow rate, flow velocities, and/or composition of the multiphase mixture. In other embodiments ⁇ a plurality of X-ray sources and/or detectors may be used.
• the apparatus comprises a radiation device, a detection device, and an analysis device.
• the radiation device generates a beam of photons to irradiate the mixture spatially over a section of flow of the mixture.
• the detection device is spatially configured to receive photons emanating from the section of flow of the mixture at different intervals of time.
• the detection device provides an image of a spatial distribution of the received photons for each the interval of time.
• the analysis device determines flow velocity of one or more phases of the mixture based on a temporal sequence of the images of the spatial distributions of the received photons.
• an X-ray source with two ranges of photon energies by applying two different high voltages.
• the photons which have a first or a "high" energy level have an absorption coefficient same for both oil and water.
• the photons which have a second or a low energy level are absorbed significantly stronger by water then by oil.
• the signals taken with two or more different high voltages of the X-ray tube can be used for material decomposition.
• the X-rays pass through the pipe and irradiate two detectors.
• the first one is sensitive to the photons with lower energies.
• the second detector is placed behind the first one and is sensitive to the photons with higher energies.
• the first detector acts as a filter for the second one. Analysis of the signals recorded by these detectors allows evaluation of water oil and gas concentrations in the multiphase mixture passing through the test section.
• a method of X-ray based measurement of a multiphase flow passing through a measurement tube an energy resolving matrix detector comprising:
• said matrix detector comprising pixels registering individual absorbed X-ray quanta and measuring the energy released by each X-ray photon; defining a certain number of energy bins;
• an X-ray based flow meter with energy resolving matrix detector comprising:
• one or more X-ray sources for generating a polychromatic photon beam that passes though said measurement tube while being attenuated by the multiphase flow; an energy resolving matrix detector for registering said polychromatic photon beam attenuated by the multiphase flow and for registering an absorbed X-ray quanta and measuring an energy released by each X-ray photon.
• the energy resolving matrix detector is configured to define a certain number of energy bins the number being dependent on the actual application.
• an energy resolving matrix detector is used for the registration of the X-rays attenuated by multiphase flow.
• the claimed apparatus acquires two or more images with X-ray photons of different energies, i.e. energy ranges.
• the multiphase flow consistently can be calculated with high accuracy. Since several photon energies are resolved by the energy resolving matrix detector at the same time, the determination of individual phase flow velocities is possible without utilization of complex algorithms thereby decreasing the demands for apparatus computational parts.
• Proposed apparatus and method of multiphase flow rate measurement improves the quality of the material decomposition as well as the quality of flow rate measurements.
• the robustness of the proposed apparatus is higher than that for the prior art apparatus due to decreasing number of required exposures.
• Fig.1 depicts a side view of apparatus for measurement of multiphase fluid flow rate, according to the invention
• Fig.2 depicts a top view of apparatus for measurement of multiphase fluid flow rate, according to the invention
• Fig.3 depicts a matrix X-ray detector with energy resolving pixels
• Fig.4 depicts the matrix X-ray detector with energy resolving pixels and energy integrating pixels
• Fig.5 depicts the matrix X-ray detector with energy resolving pixels, energy integrating pixels and non-active area.
• a polychromatic photon beam 2 is generated by one single or by several X-ray sources or by a gamma ray source 1 and passes through a measurement tube 3 containing a multiphase flow. Attenuated by the multiphase flow, the polychromatic photon beam is registered with an energy resolving matrix detector 4.
• the pixels of such a detector register the individual absorbed X-ray quanta and measure the energy released by each X-ray photon.
• a certain number of energy bins is defined, the number being dependent on the actual application. For example three bins can be defined:
• the absorbed photons are sorted into the corresponding bins.
• the output of each pixel consists in this case of the three numbers of quanta being sorted into the corresponding bin within a certain integration time.
• One exposure of the matrix detector provides two or more simultaneously acquired 2-dimensional images.
• the different images correspond to the different energy levels of photons, i.e. energy bins.
• the energy resolving matrix detector 4 can consist only of energy resolving pixels 5. Energy resolving detectors are more expensive than conventional energy integrating detectors. For the determination of the velocity an energy resolution is not required. So, as depicted in Fig. 4, the X-ray detecting area of matrix 4 can consist of a combination of energy resolving pixels 5 and energy integrating pixels 6. The signals from the integrating pixels 6 are used for velocimetry only, while the signals from the energy resolving pixels 5 can be used for both material decomposition and velocimetry.
• a non-active area/line 7 may separate the two detector areas with energy resolving energy integrating pixels.

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• Health & Medical Sciences (AREA)
• Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• General Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• Chemical & Material Sciences (AREA)
• Life Sciences & Earth Sciences (AREA)
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• Fluid Mechanics (AREA)
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• Medicinal Chemistry (AREA)
• Food Science & Technology (AREA)
• General Chemical & Material Sciences (AREA)
• Chemical Kinetics & Catalysis (AREA)
• Oil, Petroleum & Natural Gas (AREA)
• Analysing Materials By The Use Of Radiation (AREA)

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Cited By (4)

Citations (10)

• 2012
  • 2012-08-27 WO PCT/RU2012/000703 patent/WO2014035275A1/fr not_active Ceased

Patent Citations (11)

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