A Microwave Sensing and Imaging Method for Multiphase Flow Metering of Crude Oil Pipes

Abstract

This article proposes a microwave sensing and imaging method for multiphase flow monitoring and metering in oil and gas pipes. The ultrawideband (UWB) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technique is used to create a high-resolution image of the pipe cross section. The image is, then, used to estimate each phase volume by extracting the edge of each phase. Additionally, the generalized impulsization technique is presented and applied to reconstruct a sharp-image, and decrease the error in flow rate estimation. Furthermore, a novel technique to enhance the detectability of weak targets in the images is proposed. Finally, a novel sectional image reconstruction technique is also applied to improve the imaging and metering of the stratified flows. All the proposed techniques are evaluated through experiments. This study demonstrates the ability to accurately estimate the crude oil flow rate with a maximum error of 3.8%. These results show that UWB SAR is capable of providing a reliable and noninvasive solution for multiphase flow metering.

Keywords

• Oil pipe monitoring
• synthetic aperture radar (SAR)
• ultrawideband (UWB) technology