Foster-Miller is developing a microwave flow meter for vapor-liquid flows. Using radio frequency signals and proprietary processing, the non-invasive meter will measure the mass-flow, quality and void fraction of any non-conducting vapor-liquid mixture. The microwave flow meter is being developed for NASA to measure the flow of cryogens and refrigerants and will also be able to measure mixtures of natural gas and oil or hydrocarbons and air and may be extended to solid/gas flows such as coal/air mixtures. The device, however, cannot measure mixtures with significant water content.
Presented with a pure liquid or vapor flow, the meter will identify the quality and void fraction (i.e., either pure vapor or liquid phase), but not the flow rate. For such situations, the microwave meter could hand-off control to a single phase flow meter (e.g., acoustic) to measure the pure liquid or vapor flow rates.
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