Intelligent flow regime identification using IR Sensor and 3.5mm headphone jack

Abstract

Multiphase flow occurs in variety of applications in Industries and in nature. One of the most important subcategory of multiphase flow is gas-liquid flows predominantly found in evaporators, condensers, micro-reactors, cryogenic engines and in compact heat exchangers. In the present study, air-water two phase flows in a 4.7mm inner diameter glass tube with 0.3mm thickness is characterized using an IR transceiver and a headphone jack. The output of the IR receiver is sent to the laptop using a 3.5mm headphone jack. The novelty in the present work is that this eliminates the need for a dedicated micro-controller/ DAQ system to process the data. A simple program written in python is used to process the input of the mic and provide amplitude and frequency information which identifies the flow regime. High-Speed Images captured simultaneously are used to validate the output obtained using the headphone jack.