Mass Flow Measurement of Slurry Using Coriolis Flowmeters

Coriolis flowmeters have been proven to be effective while measuring single phase flows, however, the measurement accuracy degrades in case of multiphase flows. In this paper a Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) based soft-computing correction model is proposed for two-phase (sand-water) slurry mass flow measurement using Coriolis flowmeters. Experimental tests were conducted on a purpose-built slurry flow test rig for two different orientations of Coriolis measuring tubes i.e. upward and downward. Five different mass flowrates, 8200, 12000, 14300, 17000 and 20000 kg/h, were tested with Solid Volume Fraction (SVF) ranging between 0 – 1.6%. A number of features, including apparent mass flowrate, density, SVF, and solid weight concentration are used as inputs to GPR models. Two GPR models are trained and tested to estimate the measurement errors of slurry mass flow measurement for the upward and downward orientations of Coriolis flowmeters, respectively. The performances of the GPR models are assessed in comparison with the reference readings. The experimental results suggest that the proposed correction models have successfully limited the relative errors within ±0.2 % for all the five mass flowrates and SVFs from 0-1.6% for both upward and downward orientations of Coriolis flowmeters.