SENSOR FOR DETERMINING THE WATER-CONTENT OF OIL-IN-WATER EMULSION BY SPECIFIC ADMITTANCE MEASUREMENT

It is important to know the water content of oil-in-water emulsions fo r applications such as oil transportation. A new online sensor has bee n designed for this purpose. The real part of the specific admittance is used for the water-content determination. A simplified Van Beck mix ing law and an appropriate frequency are applied to obtain the water c ontent without polarization effects. Adaptive compensation is used in order to compensate temperature and salinity changes. Online real-time parametric identification of conductivity versus temperature deviatio ns observed in the water used in the emulsion is implemented. A microp rocessor-based system with an open architecture and modular scheme all ows the implementation of the electronic instrumentation and algorithm s needed. Other features, such as auto-zero and auto-range, give the i nstrument a good performance and versatility for a wide range of salin ities.