X-RAY BASED MULTIPHASE FLOW METER WITH ENERGY RESOLVING MATRIX DETECTOR

摘要

A method of X-ray based measurement of a multiphase flow components passing through a measurement tube comprises the steps of: directing a polychromatic photon beam generated by at least one X-ray source onto the measurement tube through which a multiphase flow is passed; locating a matrix detector behind the measurement tube along the beam, said matrix detector being a two-dimensional detecting structure comprising (mn) sensing elements and providing photon energy resolution, and exposing the measurement tube with multiphase flow by the X-ray pulses of a given duration and duty cycle; registering a polychromatic photon beam attenuated by said multiphase flow with an energy resolving matrix detector, whereas said matrix detector provides registration of a received photon beam according to different energy levels of the received photons and distribution of the received photons on energy levels according to spectral resolution of said matrix detector. A number of the energy levels registered by the matrix detector is defined as the ratio of maximum energy of the received photons to the spectral resolution of the array detector. A number of energy levels of interest is defined according to the number of components of said multiphase flow. For each X-ray pulse forming with the use of said matrix detector and in accordance with the defined number of energy levels a sequence of images of said multiphase flow, said images are characterized by pixel brightness; and determining from said formed sequence of images a volume content of each component of the multiphase flow basing on the value of the pixel brightness and in accordance with the law of absorption of X-ray emission. Then determining the flow rate of each component of the multiphase flow in the measuring tube in accordance with the cross-correlation analysis of the images formed by the matrix detector, and determining the volume flow rate of each phase of the multiphase flow as a product of the flow rate and the volume content of the phase.