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An on-line adaptive estimation method for water holdup measurement in oilwater two-phase

flow with a conductance/capacitance sensor

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2016 Meas. Sci. Technol. 27 074001

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 Measurement Science and Technology

Meas. Sci. Technol. 27 (2016) 074001 (13pp) doi:10.1088/0957-0233/27/7/074001

An on-line adaptive estimation method for

water holdup measurement in oilwater
two-phase flow with a conductance/
capacitance sensor
HaoWu, ChaoTan and FengDong
Tianjin Key Laboratory of Process Measurement and Control, School of Electrical Engineering and
Automation, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, Peoples Republic of China

E-mail: tanchao@tju.edu.cn

Received 28 December 2015, revised 27 March 2016

Accepted for publication 21 April 2016
Published 31 May 2016

Abstract
Oilwater two-phase flow widely exists in industrial processes such as petroleum engineering
and chemical engineering. Accurate and real-time measurement of water holdup is an
important problem requiring urgent solutions. In this work, a conductance and capacitance
combination sensor (CCCS) system with four conductance rings and two concave capacitance
plates was validated for its measurement performance of in situ water holdup through dynamic
experiments. An online adaptive weight Kalman estimation (OAWKE) fusion algorithm
for the CCCS system is proposed to fuse the conductance measurement and capacitance
measurement. The algorithm has fast and dynamic response for the water holdup measurement
of oilwater two-phase flow and has improved measurement precision by the adaptive data
fusion method. The OAWKE fusion algorithm also has the ability to deal with the abrupt
change of water holdup during the measurement process. Therefore, in the low water
conductivity condition (tap water), the CCCS system with the OAWKE fusion algorithm can
dynamically estimate the real-time full range water holdup of oilwater two-phase flow, which
has prospects in the petroleum industry.

Keywords: conductance/capacitance sensor, water holdup measurement,

oilwater two-phase flow, adaptive weight estimation, sensor fusion, Kalman estimation

(Some figuresmay appear in colour only in the online journal)

1.Introduction oil well surveillance, production prediction and mining plan

Multi-phase flow widely exists in industrial processes and
daily life. As a typical multi-phase flow, oilwater two-phase
flow is often encountered in the chemical and petroleum
industry, where process parameter measurement is important
to improve the production efficiency and safety [1]. However,
they are difficult to measure because of the complicated flow
patterns. Water holdup is one of the most important process
parameters, which is related to the production process moni-
toring and oil production estimation. Accurate and on-line
measurement of water holdup measurement is valuable to the
development.
Many water holdup measurement methods have been pro-
posed in previous research, such as the quick closing valves
(QCV) method [2], radiation method [3], microwave method
[4], wire-mesh method [5], ultrasonic method [6], and imped-
ance method [7], etc. These methods have their own advan-
tages and disadvantages. For the QCV method, it has a high
ability to calibrate all the flow patterns and flow conditions
and has high precision on the water holdup measurement, but
it cannot realize the online measurement without any distur-
bance to the continuity of the flow. For the radiation method,

0957-0233/16/074001+13$33.00 1 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK

Meas. Sci. Technol. 27 (2016) 074001
a gamma ray densitometry measures the phase fraction through
the attenuation coefficient in a different medium, such as gas
water two-phase flow and oilgaswater three phase flow [810].
However, it is difficult to measure the oilwater two-phase
flow using this method because of the similar density of the
media. It also has high device cost and high risk to the operator.
The microwave method, based on the high penetrability of the
microwave, is non-intrusive, and has the ability to measure
not only the material surface water, but also the internal water.
It can avoid the influence of the water salinity on instrument
response compared with other measurement methods [11, 12].
However, the temperature, pressure and electromagnetic inter-
ference affect the measurement performance of the microwave.
The wire-mesh method can be used to detect the local instan-
taneous cross-sectional distribution of the phases in gasliquid
two-phase flow and the flow structure can be reconstructed
[13]. But it is an intrusive measurement method which could
destroy the flow structure and can be easily contaminated. The
ultrasonic method is widely researched in gasliquid two-phase
flow for the water fraction measurement and it is also used in
waterairsand three-phase flow in a specific condition for the
air and water concentration measurement based on the reflec-
tion on the interface and the attenuation on the transmission
path [14, 15]. It can solve many measurement problems based
on a non-intrusive way. But the ultrasonic method is seriously
affected by the flow patterns. As an impedance method, the
great advantages of low cost, high sampling speed, high sen-
sitivity, high compatibility, simple sensor structure and easy
installation, etc make it widely acceptable and researched by
scholars. The conductance method, capacitance method and
impedance tomography method have been researched for the
multi-phase flow measurement [1618].
For the conductance method, the continuous phase should
be electrically conductive, and the non-continuous phase
should have a different conductivity compared with the contin-
uous phase. The phase fraction is calculated by measuring the
mixed fluid conductivity in the sensing field. Fossa proposed
a conductance probe to measure the liquid fraction in gas
liquid two-phase flow. The device has two pairs of electrodes
(one pair of ring electrodes for conductance measurement and
one pair of plate electrodes for capacitance measurement).
The electrodes are placed on the internal wall of the pipe [19].
Xu etal measured the water holdup by a conductance array
with 24 needle-like electrodes in oilwater stratified flow (ST)
[20]. For the capacitance method, the non-continuous phase
should have different relative permittivity compared with
the continuous phase [21]. Abouelwafa et al concluded that
a concave-plate capacitance structure has higher sensitivity
for phase measurement compared with other structures [22].
Huang etal discussed the conductivity effects on capacitance
measurement [23]. Strazza and Demoria obtained the relation-
ship between the accurate phase fraction and the axis length
of the capacitance plate in high viscosity oilwater two-phase
flow [24]. dos Reis et al compared the performance of dif-
ferent capacitance structures, such as a helical structure, con-
cave structure and double ring structure [25].
However, it is difficult for a single method mentioned
above to cover all the flow patterns of the two-phase flow to
2
H Wu etal
realize online measurement at high precision, high safety and
low cost due to the restriction of the measurement principle.
Therefore, combining two or more measurement methods
is a practical way to realize the full range of water holdup
measurement in oilwater two-phase flow. The impedance
sensors are considered for the combination based on their
simple structures, low cost and high compatibility. A con-
ductance and capacitance combination sensor (CCCS) and
the measurement system have been designed and optimized
to measure the water holdup in oilwater two-phase flow in
horizontal pipeline based on the different measurement princi-
ples [26]. The CCCS utilized the complementary information
and redundant information to calculate the water holdup and
analyze the dynamic features of the two-phase flow [27], and
the data fusion based on dynamic response is necessary to the
real-time water holdup measurement.
Data fusion has been used successfully in military fields
and it also has application prospects in civil fields [28]. Multi-
sensor fusion in multi-phase flow is still in its initial stage
and needs further research. Some data fusion algorithms have
been applied on two-phase flow pattern online recognition and
flow process parameter measurements [29, 30].
The Kalman filter (KF) is a recursion algorithm built
on linear algebra and a hidden Markov model in order to
realize the state estimation of a dynamic system based on a
state model and an observation model [31]. The state model
describes the state transition at each consecutive time step
with the process noise. The observation model describes the
relationship between the sensor outputs and the state vector of
the system with measurement noises [32]. KF has high perfor-
mance in estimating and forecasting the state of the dynamic
process without history data storage based on the two models.
However, multi-phase flow is a non-linear and transient
system; without widely trustworthy and quantitative descrip-
tion models, the transition state is difficult to describe and the
parameters of the KF are difficult to choose in the two models.
Therefore, the selection and optimization of the parameters to
describe and meet the actual states is necessary.
In this paper, an online adaptive weight Kalman estima-
tion (OAWKE) fusion algorithm is proposed to realize the
dynamic estimate of the real-time water holdup based on
the phase fraction calculation model of the CCCS system.
The online algorithm can realize the full range of in situ water
holdup real-time measurement in low water conductivity
(tap water), and it also has the ability to deal with the abrupt
change of water holdup during the measured flow process.
This non-intrusive measurement method can reduce pressure
loss and processing difficulty and the measurement results are
not affected by the flow direction based on its symmetrical
structure. Therefore, the CCCS system and the online esti-
mation algorithm have application prospects in liquidliquid
phase fraction measurement.
2. Sensor structure and measurement method
A CCCS system has been designed for the water holdup
measurement in oilwater two-phase flow with four conduc-
tance rings and two concave capacitance plates, as shown in
Meas. Sci. Technol. 27 (2016) 074001
Figure 1. Structure of conductance and capacitance combination sensor (CCCS) [26].
figure1. All these electrodes are installed on a Plexiglas pipe
of 50mm inner diameter.
For the conductance probes, probe 1 is connected to the
exciting signal and probe 4 is connected to the signal ground.
The exciting signal is an alternating square wave current with
2 mA peak-to-peak and 20kHz frequency. Probe 2 and probe
3 are the receiving probes, and the output potential difference
between them is proportional to the water holdup of the two-
phase flow. A dimensionless voltage V is adopted to describe
the relative voltage difference [33]:
V
V= w
(1)
Vm
where Vw is the measured voltage in the water filled pipe and
Vm is the measured voltage of the oilwater two-phase flow in
the test section.
Set m and w are the conductance of the two-phase mix-
ture and water respectively. Since V is proportional to m/w,
the water holdup can be expressed by:
3V
Ht =
(2)
2+V
based on the Maxwell equation. The dimensionless voltage V
has a good match with the water holdup in ST static calibration.
For the concave capacitance, the axial length of the plate is
40mm and the opening angle is 90. The exciting signal is an
alternating sine wave voltage of 20V peak-to-peak and 1 MHz
frequency. The phase fraction change in the sensing volume
will cause the measured capacitance change. The output signal
will be different so that this difference can be used to calculate
the water holdup. The water conductivity influences the meas-
urement, so the relative capacitance difference (RCD) is no
longer correct to calculate the water holdup in low frequency
(less than 80 MHz [34]). The impedance of the full pipe with
conductive water and non-conductive water are defined as Z w1
and Z w2. By defining a parameter = 1/Z w1 / 1/Z w2 , the water
holdup can be calculated with revised relative capacitance dif-
ference (RCD*) to eliminate the stray capacitance:
C Co V Vco
RCD = m
(3) = cm
Cw / Co Vcw / Vco
where the Co and Cw are the capacitance when the pipe is full
of oil and water respectively. Vco and Vcw are the measured
voltages that are proportional to Co and Cw.
3
H Wu etal
Since the sensing volume of the conductance and capaci-
tance are the same, high speed electrical switches are required
to set the sensing field alternated to avoid the mutual interfer-
ence. The switching speed of the two measurement methods
is 500 Hz, which is high enough to capture the dynamic
change of the oilwater two-phase flow. The sampling speed
is 200kHz for each channel with 16 bit A/D conversion. The
CCCS system has been examined with the ST response to test
the ability of the holdup measurement; detailed testing results
can be found in [26].
3. Improved Kalman measurement estimation
model
The oilwater two-phase flow is a random dynamic process,
therefore it is difficult to get the accurate system model for
flow parameter measurement because of the complicated and
variable flow process. The description of the actual process is
based on the approximate assumptions:
(1) When the estimated parameters are multi-dimensional,
the state transition matrix F (k ) is a non-singular matrix
and z is the measurement information, then the (F , z ) is
completely observable and (F, 1) is completely control-
lable.
(2) State noise v(k ) ~ N (0, Q(k )) and measurement noise
w(k ) ~ N (0, R(k )) are assumed as independent and
identically distributed Gaussian white noise. Q(k ) and
R(k ) are time variant or time invariant, v(k ) and w(k ) are
independent of each other, E [v(k )w(k )T ] = 0.
(3) The initial state is assumed as X (0) ~ N (x, P(0)) and X (0)
is independent with state noise v(k ) and measurement noise
w(k ) so that E [X (0)v(k )T ] = 0 and E [X (0)w(k )T ] = 0.
(4) The measured value z(k ) of the measurement system is
assumed to be bounded.
The Kalman estimation uses measurement z(k ) to find the
best estimation of the state quantity based on the linear min-
imum variance. The measured objects physical model of the
discrete-time system is shown as equations (4) and (5), the
state at the (k + 1) moment is:
x (k + 1) = F (k )x (k ) + v(k )
(4)
where x (k ) and x (k + 1) are the state vectors of the measured
objects at the k and (k + 1) moment, v(k ) is the Gaussian
Meas. Sci. Technol. 27 (2016) 074001
Figure 2. Fusion structure of centralized fusion and distributed fusion. (a) Centralized fusion structure. (b) Distributed fusion structure.
white noise of the state process, and F (k ) is the state transition
matrix.
The measurement model of the sensor at the k moment is:
z (k ) = h (k )x (k ) + w (k )
(5)
where z(k ) is the measured value of the sensor, h(k ) is the mea-
surement matrix of the sensor, w(k ) is the measurement noise
of the sensor.
The basic Kalman estimation process can be used as the
multi-dimensional random process estimation. The structure
of the multi-sensor data fusion algorithm can be divided into
centralized fusion and distributed fusion. For the central-
ized fusion, all the received data are sent into the data fusion
center, and all the local measurement equation and data are
combined and fused in the fusion center. For the distributed
fusion, the state of the measured process is estimated by local
sensors. The estimation results are sent to the fusion center
for data fusion to obtain the global estimation. The estimation
structure of these two algorithms are shown in figure2.
These two algorithms have their own advantages. The cen-
tralized fusion can increase estimation precision and decrease
the probability of false alarm or false rejection by reserving all
the original measurement information. This algorithm is suit-
able for a small number of sensors. The distributed fusion can
increase the speed of processing information, the reliability and
continuity of the fusion center and decrease the demand of the
communication channel and processing load of the fusion center.
According to the characteristics of the two algorithms,
the estimation precision can be increased compared with the
basic Kalman estimation. During the oilwater two-phase
flow measurement, the states are not constantly stable. The
complicated and variable flow states of oilwater two-phase
flow with abrupt changes occur frequently, especially in the
oil extraction process in the petroleum industry.
In the discrete Kalman filter estimation theory, the dynamic
change of the measured states is processed as random interfer-
ence. The noise variance update equationsare used to com-
pute the system noise covariance. The water holdup abrupt
change during the measurement is always processed as the
random interference based on the update process of the algo-
rithm, and the noise will resume to the stable state level at the
highest speed after the abrupt change process is finished. In
addition, the abrupt change interference causes large deviation
when using the basic update algorithm, so the estimation and
update speed is not fast enough to follow the abrupt change
in the measurement process. Therefore, the improved Kalman
estimator should have the ability to track the abrupt change
4
H Wu etal
state and stable state in order to decrease the interference fluc-
tuation influence.
The measurement of the CCCS system can judge the abrupt
change. A switch method is introduced into the Kalman esti-
mation algorithm to improve the estimation accuracy when
the abrupt change occurs.
H dissimilar sensors are assumed in the system (H= 2 in
the CCCS system), the measured water holdup by the jth (j=
1, 2, H) sensor at the k moment is zj (k ). So the calculation
equationfor the fluctuation judgement J(k) is:
z(k 1) + z(k 2)
J (k ) = z (k )
(6)
2
1
where z(k ) = H Hj = 1 zj (k ) is the average water holdup mea-
surement that can be calculated by the conductance mea-
surement and capacitance measurement at the k moment.
J (k ) reflects the fluctuation between the adjacent measure-
ment, and thus can identify the abrupt change and switch the
working state of the algorithm by adjusting the process noise
covariance. The judgement method is:
Q1 if J (k ) <
Q=
Q2 if J (k ) >
(7)
where Q is the process noise covariance matrix. is the
threshold and is the adjustment coefficient that can be
adjusted by the operating staff. So the abrupt change judgement
range and judgement standard can be controlled according to
different applications. Q1 is used as Q when J (k ) is less than
the threshold, and Q2 is used as Q when J (k ) is larger than
the threshold. When the abrupt change happens, J (k ) will be
larger than the threshold and will be used as the judgement
standard to switch the operation state of the Kalman estimator.
In the high water holdup situation (water holdup Hw is
larger than 30%) and high flow rate (the flow pattern is not ST
or stratified flow with mixing at the interfaces (ST&MI)), the
measurement results of the conductance sensor and capaci-
tance sensor can be fused by Kalman centralized fusion. The
measurement results of the single sensor can also be esti-
mated, and the estimation results data can be fused by Kalman
distributed fusion. The centralized estimation algorithm and
distributed estimation algorithm can obtain their own esti-
mation results. The judgement standard is very important in
Kalman fusion estimation. For the random dynamic process,
it is difficult for the single estimation algorithm to capture the
rapidly changing information. Different algorithms have dif-
ferent problems, such as low response speed and estimation
Meas. Sci. Technol. 27 (2016) 074001
precision. Therefore, different algorithms with a suitable
weight coefficient are necessary for better results. An adaptive
weighting algorithm for fusing the results of different algo-
rithms is used to improve the precision. Different estimation
algorithms have different estimation precision, so it is unfair
to use the same weight coefficient. For a higher precision, a
parameter called uncertainty compensation is used to adjust
the weight coefficient, which can be obtained by calibration.
For the qth estimation algorithm, the adjustable weight at the
k moment Wq(k ) can be calculated as:
Wq(k ) = 2q + (xq(k 1) x (k 1))2
(8)
where q is the uncertainty compensation of the qth esti-
mation algorithm, xq(k-1) is the estimated water holdup
of the qth estimation algorithm at the (k-1) moment, and
1
x (k 1) = m qm= 1 xq(k 1) is the average estimated water
holdup value of all the estimation algorithms at the (k-1)
moment.
In order to avoid the deviation from estimated values, the
Wq(k ) is normalized by:
Wq(k )
W q(k ) = m
(9)
Wq(k )
q=1
where W q(k ) is the adaptive weight of the qth algorithm at
the k moment, m is the total number of estimation algorithms
which can obtain the corresponding estimation results.
For the calculation, the final water holdup estimate based
on the weight is:
m
Hw(k ) = xq(k ) W q(k )
(10)
q=1
where Hw(k ) is the calculated water holdup at the k moment.
The CCCS system is designed as the water holdup meas-
urement instrument, so the full-scale error is used to follow
the standard criterion of instruments, which is calculated by:
Holdupmeas HoldupQCV
Er =
(11) 100%
Holdup range
1 n
Eave r = Er 100%
(12)
n i
where n is the sample size, Holdupmeas and HoldupQCV are the
water holdup values measured by the CCCS system and QCV,
the Holdup range is the measured water holdup range which
equals 100% because of its whole holdup range. In order to
evaluate the efficiency of the algorithm, Holdupmeas can be
replaced by Holdupesti which is the water holdup estimation.
Eave_r is the average of the absolute value of Er for overall
accuracy comparison.
4. Experimental description
The two-phase flow experiments were conducted on an oil
gaswater multi-phase flow experimental facility shown in
figure3.
5
H Wu etal
The total length of the horizontal experimental pipeline
is 16.6 m which is made by stainless steel with 50mm inner
diameter. The loop has two branches of 7.2 m and 7.3 m each.
The CCCS system and QCV were installed about 13 m
from the inlet of the horizontal experimental pipeline to make
the flow pattern fully develop, and about 1.5 m far from the
outlet of the horizontal experimental pipeline to avoid the
influence of reflux at the bend. The shutdown sectionof QCV
has 800mm length and 50mm inner diameter. The time of the
valve turning on or off is less than 0.8s, and the fluid in the
QCV shut down sectionis about 1820ml, including the fluid
left in the valves body.
Tap water (density 998 kg m3, dynamic viscosity
0.00101 Pa s) and mineral white oil (density 841kg m3,
dynamic viscosity 0.025 Pa s) were used as the experimental
medium. A water tower 32 m high is used to make the water
pressure stable (0.32MPa) and a frequency converter is used
to make the oil pressure stable (0.1 MPa0.4MPa). For the
oilwater two-phase flow experiment, oil and water are
pumped into the single phase measurement pipe from the oil
tank and water tank. Oil and water flow through single phase
flow meters of different flow rate range respectively which are
used to make sure the precision of the measurement can be
used as the dynamic calibration standard (less than 1% preci-
sion on average). After the calibration, the fluid will flow into
the experimental pipe. The oil and water are mixed well at the
beginning of the experimental pipeline by an ejector. Then,
the mixed fluid flows through the CCCS system and then goes
into the separate tank.
In the oilwater two-phase flow experiment, the superficial
water velocity was between 0.04 m s1 and 2 m s1, the super-
ficial oil velocity was between 0.07 m s1 and 2 m s1. The
inlet pressure was about 0.2MPa, and the inlet temperature
was about 20 C. The experiments were designed based on the
Tralleros flow pattern map, covering ST, ST&MI, dispersion
of oil in water and water (O/W&W), dispersion of water in oil
and oil in water (W/O &O/W), oil in water emulsion (O/W)
and water in oil emulsion (W/O)[35]. For each oilwater two-
phase flow experimental condition, the sampling time of the
CCCS system is 20s. The experiment conditions are shown
in figure4.
5. Experimental results and discussions
QCV measurement results are used as the reference values for
the water holdup calibration. The measuring cylinders were
used to measure the extracted fluid from the shut down sec-
tionwith 0.55% precision.
5.1. Basic online measurement algorithm
Based on equations (1)(3), the average water holdup mea-
sured by the conductance sensor and capacitance sensor are
compared with QCV, as shown in figure5.
For the conductance sensor, when the water holdup is less
than 30%, oil is the continuous phase. The measured values are
ineffective because it is hard to form the current loop between
the probes. When the water holdup is higher than 30%, water
Meas. Sci. Technol. 27 (2016) 074001
Figure 3. The schematic of the experimental loop in Tianjin University.
Figure 4. Experimental conditions based on Tralleros flow pattern
transition boundaries.
is the continuous phase, the measured values are proportional
to the water holdup based on the impendence matching of the
circuit. The measured results for the situation that the water
holdup is less than 30% are easy to recognize because the
water holdup estimated by equations(1) and (2) is larger than
100%. For the capacitance sensor, the value of for RCD*
calculation is 0.38, which is related to the thickness and mat
erials of the pipe wall. According to the measured voltage, the
capacitance measurements do not have high resolution for the
flow pattern of ST and ST&MI at a low flow rate (the mix-
ture superficial flow velocity is less than 0.3 m s1). The ST
and ST&MI flow pattern measured by capacitance sensors are
easy to recognize because the measured voltages are less than
6
H Wu etal
Figure 5. Measurement value of conductance probes and concave
capacitance.
other flow patterns. Therefore, the results of the conductance
sensor (figure 5(a)) only include the estimates when the water
holdup is higher than 30%, and the results of the capacitance
sensor (figure 5(b)) do not include the estimates in ST flow
and ST&MI flow.
In view of the measurement results, an online measurement
algorithm for the water holdup calculation has been proposed.
The flowchart graph of the algorithm is shown in figure6.
The Hwcon(k ) is the water holdup calculated with con-
ductance data, Hwcap(k ) is the water holdup calculated with
capacitance data. According to figure 6, when the water
holdup calculated by the conductance method is larger than
100%, it means the flow condition is oil continuous flow
Meas. Sci. Technol. 27 (2016) 074001
Figure 6. CCCS system online measurement algorithm.
(water holdup is less than 30%) and the flow pattern is not
ST or ST&MI flow, so the water holdup calculated by the
capacitance sensor should be adopted. When the received
signals of the capacitance sensor are very close to or smaller
than the value when the pipe is full of water, it means the
flow pattern is ST or ST&MI flowthen the water holdup
calculated by the conductance sensor should be adopted
(equation (1)). Under other conditions, the water holdup cal-
culated by the conductance sensor and capacitance sensor
are fused with the OAWKE fusion algorithm to improve the
measurement precision.
5.2. Centralized and distributed Kalman estimation results
The complexity in the flow process and the transition of
different flow patterns is random and unpredictable. When
the water holdup is higher than 30% and the flow pat-
tern is not ST flow or ST&MI flow, the water holdup cal-
culated by conductance and capacitance should be fused.
Equations (A.1)(A.5) in appendix A are used to create a
Kalman estimator to predict the real-time water holdup. The
variance of zero-mean Gaussian white noise is used as the
measurement noise variance R. The minimum of the local
variance of the measured signal can be used as noise vari-
ance, and the maximum can be used as signal variance; the
ratio between them is signal-noise ratio (SNR). The noise
can be reconstructed by the SNR to obtain the process noise
7
H Wu etal
Figure 7. Water holdup Kalman estimation by conductance and
capacitance.
covariance Q by using the measured data from the past 1s,
so the memory of the estimator only needs to reserve 1s
data. As an example, when the water superficial velocity is
1.97 m s1 and the oil superficial velocity is 0.43 m s1, the
water holdup measured by QCV is 83.8%, and the average
water holdup calculated by conductance and capacitance
are 82.3% and 83.6%. The estimation results are shown in
figure7.
For all the experimental conditions where both sensors
are valid, the centralized fusion and distributed fusion are
used separately to estimate the water holdup. For the central-
ized fusion, the water holdup measured by the conductance
method and capacitance method are used as the input to obtain
global centralized estimation X cf (k k ). The estimated value
should follow the real value at the fastest time, so the average
measurement of the two methods is used as the initial input
of the centralized fusion (equations (B.1) and (B.2)). For the
distributed fusion, the estimation of the water holdup of each
sensor is used as the input to obtain global distributed esti-
mation X df (k k ). The estimated value should follow the real
value, so the average value of the two-method estimation is
used as the initial input of the distributed fusion (equations
(B.3)(B.6)). The fusion results of the centralized fusion and
distributed fusion for the previous flow conditions are shown
in figure8.
According to figure8, the centralized estimation results are
better than the distributed estimation. For all the experimental
conditions, the comparison between the centralized estima-
tion and the distributed estimation is shown in figure9.
The errors are calculated by equation (11). These results
show that the precision of the distributed estimation and cen-
tralized estimation are both better than using each method
alone. To further improve the performance of the distributed
estimation and the centralized estimation, an algorithm that
integrates these two estimation methods is needed. On the
other hand, the abrupt change of the water holdup occurs fre-
quently in industrial processes. So the measurement method
Meas. Sci. Technol. 27 (2016) 074001
Figure 8. Water holdup Kalman estimation results for the case. (a) Water holdup Kalman estimation. (b) Kalman estimation variances.
Figure 9. Water holdup Kalman estimation results and the errors comparison. (a) Kalman estimation fusion results. (b) Error of different
estimation methods.
and estimation algorithm should also have the ability to deal
with the abrupt change.
5.3. Improved estimation algorithm for water holdup abrupt
change
The water holdup abrupt change is a large fluctuation of the
water holdup in the oilwater two-phase flow, which may
cause flow patterns transition. However, the abrupt change
of the water holdup happens randomly and frequently, there-
fore it is important to deal with the abrupt change during the
measurement.
A normal Kalman estimation takes more time in iteration
to deal with the abrupt change. In the case shown in figure10,
three stages of water holdup are chosen to test the influence of
the abrupt change: the superficial velocity of oil was 0.28 m s1
and water was 1.98 m s1, the superficial velocity of oil was
0.71 m s1 and water was 1.97 m s1, and the superficial
velocity of oil was 0.84 m s1 and water was 1.27 m s1.
8
H Wu etal
The sampling time of each stage was 20s. The results with
normal Kalman estimation are shown in figure10.
The performance of normal Kalman estimation is delayed
to respond to the abrupt change of the water holdup. Both
the capacitance estimation and conductance estimation need
several seconds to follow the abrupt change, then the estima-
tion performs efficiently during the stable flow state. Since the
flow process in multi-phase flow is random, it is difficult to
obtain the prior information and set up a precise state trans
ition model for Kalman estimation. Therefore, it is hard to
satisfy the real-time measurement requirement.
The threshold and judgement parameter J (k ) is used to
deal with this situation based on equations (6) and (7). The
past 1s measurements are used to obtain the noise variance of
the stable flow state by the noise reconstruction based on SNR
when the maximum value is Q1, and Q2 is the abrupt signal
response variance which is calculated in the same way as Q1
and estimated less than 0.1 based on experience. In order to
judge the abrupt change, the measured water holdup by the
Meas. Sci. Technol. 27 (2016) 074001
Figure 10. Normal water holdup Kalman estimation value for abrupt change ((a) capacitance estimation; (b) conductance estimation;
(c) distributed estimation and centralized estimation).
Figure 11. Improved water holdup Kalman estimation value for abrupt change ((a) capacitance estimation; (b) conductance estimation;
(c) distributed estimation and centralized estimation).
conductance and capacitance sensor is an important reference.
The water holdup measured by conductance and capacitance
at the k moment and the average value of the (k-1) moment and
(k-2) moment are compared during measurement. The differ-
ence between these two values is used as judgement parameter
J (k ) because sometimes the change of the individual meas-
ured signal between the (k-1) moment and k moment is larger
than the threshold, and occasionally even in the stable process
if the threshold is small. It will lead the switch function
to misjudgment. The average values of the (k-1) moment and
(k-2) moment are used to avoid this pitfall. On the other hand,
the adjustment coefficient is used to avoid false judgements.
In this case, is chosen as 3%, and is chosen as 1, so
is 3%. When the abrupt change happened, if the measured
value of the water holdup is less than 3%, Q1 is used as the
noise variance and the discrete Kalman estimator de-noise the
measured signal. Otherwise, it means the abrupt change hap-
pens, and Q2 is used as the noise variance and discrete Kalman
estimator track the abrupt change signal. The testing results of
the improved algorithm with threshold is shown in figure11.
The estimation results of the improved algorithm show
that when the abrupt change happens, the performance of
the conductance estimation and capacitance estimation are
better than the basic Kalman fusion estimation. However,
compared with the centralized estimation, the distributed esti-
mation also has time delay when tracking the abrupt change
of water holdup, because it needs to wait for the estimation
results of conductance and capacitance for further calculation.
9
H Wu etal
According to this result, for the abrupt change, the centralized
estimation has better performance than the distributed estima-
tion. For the stable state, the distributed estimation has higher
precision than the centralized estimation for more than half of
the experimental conditions. However, the estimation results
should output the best and unique values for the water holdup.
Therefore, an adaptive weight fusion algorithm is used to fuse
the advantages of different estimation algorithms in order to
balance the delay time with high precision.
5.4. Online adaptive weight Kalman estimation fusion
algorithm
To deal with the random dynamic process of oilwater two-
phase flow, at each estimation moment, four estimation results
of four algorithms that include conductance measurement
Kalman estimation, capacitance measurement Kalman esti-
mation, centralized estimation and distributed estimation are
integrated to achieve a more reliable and accurate estimate of
water holdup. To avoid the influence of the abrupt change,
estimations from the three algorithms (centralized estima-
tion, conductance estimation and capacitance estimation) for
3s after the abrupt change are used in the adaptive weighting
algorithm based on the judgement parameter J (k ). For the
stable flow state, estimations from the four algorithms are
used in the adaptive weighting algorithm based on the judge-
ment. The adaptive weighting algorithm should be calculated
by equations (8)(10). The adaptive weight W q(k ) updates
Meas. Sci. Technol. 27 (2016) 074001
are based on the estimated result at the (k-1) moment and the
uncertainty compensation q of each algorithm. Therefore, the
weight will adaptively update with the measurements of dif-
ferent time steps. In the three or four algorithms based on the
abrupt change condition and stable condition, the qth algo-
rithm uncertainty compensation q is needed to calculate and
calibrate. For the calibration of the CCCS system, the sys-
tematic error of the water holdup measurement of the capaci-
tance sensor and conductance sensor is less than 5%, so the
maximum error of each sensor j is used as the uncertainty
compensation of single sensor estimation. For the distributed
estimation and centralized estimation, the uncertainty com-
pensation q can be calculated by:
H
q = 2j
(13)
j=1
the uncertainty compensation of the distributed estimation
and centralized estimation are both 7.07%. On the other hand,
based on previous results, the distributed estimation of more
than half the experimental conditions is better than the central-
ized estimation, so the distributed estimation should be set at a
higher weight. The fusion estimation is better than the single
measurement estimation, so the weight of the centralized esti-
mation should be higher than the conductance estimation and
capacitance estimation. Under the above constraints, 0.6 and
0.4 were selected as the coefficient of distributed estimation
and centralized estimation separately. Therefore, for the dis-
tributed estimation, the uncertainty compensation is 8.48%,
and the uncertainty compensation of the centralized estima-
tion is 5.66%. The estimation results for the abrupt change
situation are shown in figure12.
According to the examples in figure 14, the Eave_esti_r of
different algorithms is calculated by equation(12). The Eave_
esti_r of the distributed estimation is 1.39%, the Eave_esti_r of the
centralized estimation is 1.56% and the Eave_esti_r of the adap-
tive online estimation results is 1.32%. The adaptive online
estimation also has faster response for the abrupt change. In
summary, the OAWKE fusion algorithm for the water holdup
measurement by the CCCS system is shown in figure13.
For the stable state, the water holdup error is calcu-
lated by equation (11). The comparison of the conductance
sensor measurement, capacitance sensor measurement and
the OAWKE fusion algorithm estimation values is shown in
figure14.
According to the results, when the measurement value of
one sensor has a positive error and the other has a negative
error, the fusion results will have great improvement on the
estimation precision. When the measurement values of both
sensors have the same positive errors or negative errors, the
fusion results will also have improvements compared with the
middle values of the errors. The average error of the two sen-
sors measurement results of all the experimental conditions
is1.06%, and the error of the fusion results of all the exper
imental conditions is0.95%. Therefore, the OAWKE fusion
results are better than the average values of the two sensor
measurement results and it is efficient for the water holdup
measurement improvement.
10
H Wu etal
Figure 12. Water holdup online output results for abrupt change
situation.
In order to evaluate the overall accuracy of the different
algorithms, equation (12) is used to calculate the average
error based on all the experiment conditions. The comparison
results are shown in figure15.
The comparison results show that the OAWKE fusion algo-
rithm has higher precision than the model based results of the
water holdup calculated by the conductance sensor and capac-
itance sensor. It also has higher precision than the Kalman
estimation based algorithms. For the abrupt change state, the
OAWKE fusion algorithm is calculated with abrupt change
judgement and fuses different estimation algorithms without
the slowest distributed estimation algorithm. Therefore, the
OAWKE fusion algorithm has fast response for the abrupt
change state and high precision for the stable state.
6.Conclusions
A CCCS system combines the capacitance method and con-
ductance method to measure the water holdup. The two sen-
sors are compacted at the same sensing space, and operate
under the control of high-speed switches to measure the water
holdup alternatively. For the conductance method, the mea-
sured data will be valid except for water holdup less than 30%
in dispersed flow, and for the capacitance method, the mea-
sured data will be valid for the whole range except the flow
pattern is ST flow or ST&MI flow. Therefore, the measured
values of these two methods provide the complementary data
and redundant data at different flow conditions. It is impor-
tant to utilize the redundant data to improve the measurement
results based on data fusion when the sensor measurement
precision is not high enough. For the redundant data, the
OAWKE fusion algorithm is used to improve the measure-
ment results.
The measured data of the conductance sensor and capaci-
tance sensor are used to realize the conductance estimation,
capacitance estimation, centralized estimation and distributed
estimation. An adaptive weight fusion is used to improve the
fusion results. According to the Kalman estimation theory, the
Meas. Sci. Technol. 27 (2016) 074001 H Wu etal

Figure 13. Online adaptive weight Kalman estimation (OAWKE) fusion algorithm.

Figure 14. Comparison of water holdup calculation results for all experimental conditions.

process noise covariance of the stable state and abrupt state
are different. In order to switch the fusion algorithm working
state, a judgement parameter J (k ) and threshold are used
to make judgement. When J (k ) is smaller than , the fusion
algorithm is working in the stable state; all the four estimation
results are used in the adaptive weight fusion. When J (k ) is
larger than , the fusion algorithm is working in the abrupt
change state; only three estimation results (without distributed
estimation that has the slowest response) are used in the adap-
tive weight fusion.
The OAWKE fusion algorithm can realize the online esti-
mate of water holdup. For the stable state, according to the

11
Meas. Sci. Technol. 27 (2016) 074001 H Wu etal

where the matrix K (k + 1) is the Kalman Gain at the (k + 1)

moment:

K (k + 1) = p(k + 1 k )hT (k + 1)

[h(k + 1)p(k + 1 k )hT (k + 1) + R]1 (A.5)
where p(k k ) is the covariance matrix of the state estimation
error at the k moment, p(k + 1 k ) is the covariance matrix of
the state prediction estimation error at the k moment, x(k k )
is the state estimation value for the estimated value x (k ) at the
k moment, and x(k + 1 k ) is the state prediction estimation
value for the estimated value x (k + 1) at the k moment, R and
Q are the covariance matrix of measurement noise and process
noise at the k moment separately.
The Kalman centralized estimation equationsare:
 H
cf (k k ) = X
X cf (k k 1) + Kj(k k ) [zj(k ) hj(k )X
cf (k k 1)]
Figure 15. The overall full-scale error for different algorithms.
j=1
average error calculation of all the experimental conditions, (B.1)
the OAWKE fusion algorithm (1.86%) has better performance
compared with the model based water holdup calculation cf (k k 1) = Fcf (k 1)X
X
(B.2) cf (k 1 k 1)
(conductance 2.32%, capacitance 2.41%) and Kalman esti-
where the subscript cf means that the centralized estimation
mation based water holdup calculation (conductance 2.23%,
is adopted. X cf (k k ) is the global centralized estimation for the
capacitance 2.40%). For the abrupt change state, the OAWKE
state x (k ) at the k moment, X cf (k k 1) is the prediction for
fusion algorithm has a fast response speed and higher preci-
sion during the water holdup measurement. the state x (k ) at the (k-1) moment, Fcf (k 1) is the centralized
Therefore, in the low water conductivity condition (tap transition matrix at the (k-1) moment.
water), the CCCS system cooperating with the programmable The Kalman distributed estimation equationsare:
OAWKE fusion algorithm can realize the full range water
holdup measurement of oilwater two phase flow. It is an Xdf (k k ) = X df (k k 1)
efficient solution to measure the water holdup by integrating H
+ Pdf (k k ) pj 1 (k k ) [xj (k k ) X

different sensors, convenient installation with a symmetrical df (k k 1)]
j=1

structure, the non-turbulent measurement method and online
measurement algorithm. H
df (k k 1)]

pj 1 (k k 1) [xj (k k 1) X


j=1
Acknowledgments 
(B.3)
The authors would like to express their gratitude for the sup-
port from the National Natural Science Foundation of China df (k k 1) = Fdf (k )X
X
(B.4) df (k 1 k 1)
(No. 61473206 and 61227006).

H
Appendix A. Basic Kalman estimation theory Pdf1(k k ) = Pdf1(k k 1) + [ pj 1 (k k ) pj 1 (k k 1)]
j=1
The Kalman estimation update equationsare shown as follows: (B.5)
The state at the (k + 1) moment is calculated based on the
state at the k moment: Pdf (k k 1) = Fdf (k 1)Pdf (k 1 k 1)F Tdf (k 1) + Q

x(k + 1 k ) = F (k + 1)x(k k )
(A.1) (B.6)

p(k + 1 k ) = F (k )p(k k )FT (k ) + Q
(A.2)
The estimated value is revised based on the measured data:
x (k + 1 k + 1) = x (k + 1 k ) + K (k + 1)
[z(k + 1) h(k + 1)x (k + 1 k )]
p(k + 1 k + 1) = [I K (k + 1)h(k + 1)] p(k + 1 k )
(A.4)
where the subscript df means the distributed estimation is
adopted. X df (k k ) is the global distributed estimation for the
state x (k ) at the k moment, Fdf (k ) is the distributed transition
matrix at the k moment, X df (k k 1) is the prediction for the
state x (k ) at the (k-1) moment, Pdf (k k ) is the global distributed
(A.3)
covariance at the k moment, and Pdf (k k 1) is the prediction
for the global distributed estimation covariance at the (k-1)
moment.

12
Meas. Sci. Technol. 27 (2016) 074001
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