Temperature Compensation for Conductivity-Based Phase Fraction Measurements with Wire-Mesh Sensors in Gas-Liquid Flows of Dilute Aqueous Solutions

Wire-mesh sensors are well-established scientific instruments for measuring the spatio-temporal phase distribution of two-phase flows based on different electrical conductivities of the phases. Presently, these instruments are also applied in industrial processes and need to cope with dynamic operating conditions increasingly. However, since the quantification of phase fractions is achieved by normalizing signals with respect to a separately recorded reference measurement, the results are sensitive to temperature differences in any application. Therefore, the present study aims at proposing a method to compensate temperature effects in the data processing procedure. Firstly, a general approach is theoretically derived from the underlying measurement principle and compensation procedures for the electrical conductivity from literature models. Additionally, a novel semi-empirical model is developed on the basis of electrochemical fundamentals. Experimental investigations are performed using a single-phase water loop with adjustable fluid temperature in order to verify the theoretical approach for wire-mesh sensor applications and to compare the different compensation models by means of real data. Finally, the preferred model is used to demonstrate the effect of temperature compensation with selected sets of experimental two-phase data from a previous study. The results are discussed in detail and show that temperature effects need to be handled carefully—not merely in industrial applications, but particularly in laboratory experiments.