There are many petrochemical industries that need adequate knowledge of multiphase flow phenomena inside pipes. In such industries, measuring the void fraction is considered to be a very challenging task. Thus, various techniques have been used for void fraction measurements. For determining more accurate multiphase flow measurements, this study employed dual non-intrusive techniques, gamma-ray and electrical capacitance sensors. The techniques using such sensors are considered non-intrusive as they do not cause any perturbation of the local structure of the phases' flow. The first aim of this paper is to analyze both techniques separately for the void fraction data obtained from practical experiments. The second aim is to use both techniques' data in a neural network model to analyze measurements more efficiently. Accordingly, a new system is configured to combine the two techniques' data to obtain more precise results than they can individually. The simulations and analyzing procedures were performed using MATLAB. The model shows that using gamma-ray and capacitance-based sensors gives Mean Absolute Errors (MAE) of 3.8% and 2.6%, respectively, while using both techniques gives a lower MAE that is nearly 1%. Consequently, measurements using two techniques have the ability to enhance the multiphase flows' observation with more accurate features. Such a hybrid measurement system is proposed to be a forward step toward an adaptive observation system within related applications of multiphase flows.

Radiation-based instruments have been widely used in petrochemical and oil industries to monitor liquid products transported through the same pipeline. Different radioactive gamma-ray emitter sources are typically used as radiation generators in the instruments mentioned above. The idea at the basis of this research is to investigate the use of an X-ray tube rather than a radioisotope source as an X-ray generator: This choice brings some advantages that will be discussed. The study is performed through a Monte Carlo simulation and artificial intelligence. Here, the system is composed of an X-ray tube, a pipe including fluid, and a NaI detector. Two-by-two mixtures of four various oil products with different volume ratios were considered to model the pipe’s interface region. For each combination, the X-ray spectrum was recorded in the detector in all the simulations. The recorded spectra were used for training and testing the multilayer perceptron (MLP) models. After training, MLP neural networks could estimate each oil product’s volume ratio with a mean absolute error of 2.72 which is slightly even better than what was obtained in former studies using radioisotope sources.

Two phase flows are of particular importance in various research fields. In the current article, a novel system consists of an X-ray tube and one sodium iodide crystal detector with ability of determining type of flow regime as well as void fraction percentage of a two phase flow, is proposed. MCNP-X code was used for physical modelling of the proposed system and its performance. Radial basis function (RBF) was also implemented for analyzing and classifying the obtained data from the proposed system. Counts in each 1 keV energy bin of photon energy spectra in the detector were inserted in RBF as inputs data set and flow regime and void fraction percentage were obtained as the two outputs. After training the RBF network, the system could simultaneously recognize all the flow regimes and predict the void fraction percentage of a modelled liquid–gas two-phase flow with an acceptable error. The proposed methodology in the present paper has three main novelties and advantages over former studies. Firstly, in this system an X-ray tube is used compared to previous studies where one or more radioisotope sources served as radiation source in a radiation based multi-phase flow meter. Secondly, in former works at least two detectors were used to recognize type of flow pattern and meter volume fractions simultaneously, while in this study only one detector is utilized. Thirdly, in this study just one neural network is used, while in other studies more than one network was used.

In this paper, the feasibility of using an X-ray tube instead of radioisotope sources for measuring volume fractions of gas, oil, and water in two typical flow regimes of three-phase flows, namely, annular and stratified, is evaluated. This study’s proposed detection system is composed of an X-ray tube, a 1 inch × 1 inch NaI detector, and one Pyrex-glass pipe to model different volume fractions for two flow regimes, annular and stratified. Group method of data handling (GMDH), a powerful regression tool, was also implemented to analyze the obtained data. The obtained results in this work indicate that a simple system based on an X-ray tube and just one NaI detector could be a potential alternative to radioisotope-based systems for separate measurements of gas, oil, and water volume fractions in annular and stratified flow regimes of a three-phase flow.