A new contactless impedance sensor for void fraction measurement of gas-liquid two-phase flow

With impedance elimination principle and phase sensitive demodulation (PSD) technique, this work aims to develop a new contactless impedance sensor, which is suitable for the void fraction measurement of gas-liquid two-phase flow. The impedance elimination principle is used to overcome the unfavorable influences of the coupling capacitances, i.e. the capacitive reactances of the coupling capacitances are eliminated by the inductive reactance of an introduced inductor. PSD technique is used to implement the impedance measurement. Unlike the conventional conductance/impedance sensors which use the equivalent conductance (the real part of the impedance) or the amplitude of the impedance of gas-liquid two-phase flow, the new contactless impedance sensor makes full use of the total impedance information of gas-liquid two-phase flow (including the amplitude, the real part and the imaginary part of the impedance, especially the imaginary part) to implement the void fraction measurement. As a preliminary study, to verify the effectiveness of the new contactless impedance sensor, two prototypes (with different inner diameters of 17.0 mm and 22.0 mm) are developed and experiments are carried out. Two typical flow patterns (bubble flow and stratified flow) of gas-liquid two-phase flow are investigated. The experimental results show that the new contactless impedance sensor is successful and effective. Compared with the conventional conductance/impedance sensors, the new contactless impedance sensor can avoid polarization effect and electrochemical erosion effect. The total impedance information is used and the void fraction measurement performance of the new sensor is satisfactory. The experimental results also indicate that the imaginary part of the impedance of gas-liquid two-phase flow is very useful for the void fraction measurement. Making full use of the total impedance information of gas-liquid two-phase flow can effectively improve the void fraction measurement accuracy.