Towards an intelligent integrated methodology for accurate determination of volume percentages in three-phase flow systems

Abstract

Accurate determination of volume percentages in three-phase fluids is paramount for the success of various industrial processes, ranging from oil and gas production to chemical engineering. This study presents a comprehensive approach to this challenge by leveraging advanced signal processing techniques and machine learning paradigms. Our methodology integrates the time, frequency, and wavelet transform features extracted from X-ray-based measurement systems whose structure consists of an X-ray tube source, two sodium iodide detectors, and a test pipe, all of which were simulated using the Monte Carlo N Particle code. The amalgamation of these features provides a rich representation of the fluid composition that captures both temporal and spectral characteristics. To enhance the discriminative power of the features, we employ a simulated annealing algorithm to strategically reduce their dimensionality and select pertinent features. The simulated annealing unit systematically evaluates the contribution of each feature to predictive accuracy. Further, through iterative elimination and re-evaluation, the algorithm refines the feature set, retaining only those with the highest relevance to the three-phase fluid composition. This feature selection process optimises the performance of subsequent machine learning models, streamlining the input space for enhanced interpretability and efficiency. Finally, to determine the volume percentages, we employ a support vector regression (SVR) neural network, which is trained on a refined dataset with capability to handle complex relationships and high-dimensional data. The proposed approach demonstrates superior accuracy in determining volume percentages of three-phase fluids compared to traditional methods, thereby making it an effective and integrated technique to analyse fluid composition in a variety of industrial settings and applications.