Electrostatic nonintrusive method for measuring the flow rate of insulating fluids

Abstract EN

Theoretical analysis is given here showing the existence of a linear relation-ship between the mean velocity in a pipe v and the mean frequency ώ in the spectrum of the noise signal caused by the passage of electrostatic charges carried by the flow as picked up by a suitable system of electrodes.

The analogue electronic circuit required to obtain ώ is built and tested in a flow circuit employing air.

The experimental results confirmed the linear relationship expected theoretically and the error in the reading is about ± 2 %.