Oil Flow Rate Measurements Using 198au And Total Count Technique

In industrial plants, oil and oil compounds are usually transported by closed pipelines with circular cross-section. The use of radiotracers in oil transport and processing industrial facilities allows calibrating flowmeters, measuring mean residence time in cracking columns, locate points of obstruction or leak in underground ducts, as well as investigating flow behavior or industrial processes such as in distillation towers. Inspection techniques using radiotracers are non-destructive, simple, economic and highly accurate. Among them, Total Count, which uses a small amount of radiotracer with known activity, is acknowledged as an absolute technique for flow rate measurement. A viscous fluid transport system, composed by four PVC pipelines with 13m length (12m horizontal and 1m vertical) and ½, ¾, 1 and 2-inch gauges, respectively, interconnected by maneuvering valves was designed and assembled in order to conduct the research. This system was used to simulate different flow conditions of petroleum compounds and for experimental studies of flow profile in the horizontal and upward directions. As 198Au presents a single photopeak (411,8 keV), it was the radioisotope chosen for oil labeling, in small amounts (6 ml) or around 200 kBq activity, and it was injected in the oil transport lines. A NaI scintillation detector 2”x 2”, with well-defined geometry, was used to measure total activity, determine the calibration factor F and, positioned after a homogenization distance and interconnected to a standardized electronic set of nuclear instrumentation modules (NIM), to detect the radioactive cloud.

Evaluation of Cross Correlation Technique to Measure Flow in Pipes of the Oil Industry

The present work is concerned with the use of the cross correlation technique to measure delay time between two simulated signals displaced with respect to time, in order to develop a cross correlator system that will be used to measure the water and oil pipes flowrate in which the detection system is composed by two external low intensity radiation sources located along the tube and two NaI(Tl) gamma-ray detectors. The final purpose of the correlator system is to use the natural disturbances, as the turbulence in the own flow rather than to inject radioactive tracers to the fluid flow as usually is carried out. In the design of this correlator is evaluated the point-by-point calculation method for the cross correlation function in order to produce a system accurate and fast. This method is divided at the same time in three modes of operation: direct, relay and polarity.

Flow Regime Identification Methodology with Mcnp-X Code And Artificial Neural Network

This paper presents flow regimes identification methodology in multiphase system in annular, stratified and homogeneous oil-water-gas regimes. The principle is based on recognition of the pulse height distributions (PHD) from gamma-ray with supervised artificial neural network (ANN) systems. The detection geometry simulation comprises of two NaI(Tl) detectors and a dual-energy gamma-ray source. The measurement of scattered radiation enables the dual modality densitometry (DMD) measurement principle to be explored. Its basic principle is to combine the measurement of scattered and transmitted radiation in order to acquire information about the different flow regimes. The PHDs obtained by the detectors were used as input to ANN. The data sets required for training and testing the ANN were generated by the MCNP-X code from static and ideal theoretical models of multiphase systems. The ANN correctly identified the three different flow regimes for all data set evaluated. The results presented show that PHDs examined by ANN may be applied in the successfully flow regime identification.