Method and apparatus for an acoustic pulse decay density determination
AssigneeBaker Hughes Incorporated
InventorRocco DiFoggio
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An acoustic transducer is in contact with a near wall that has a much different acoustic impedance than a fluid. The transducer transmits an acoustic pulse into into the wall (such as a plate, a wall of a tube or a wall of a sample chamber) that is in contact with this fluid. As the acoustic pulse bounces back and forth within this “near wall”, each echo of this original pulse loses the same fraction of energy on each round trip so the echo energy decays exponentially. Knowing the acoustic impedance of the wall material and the reflection intensity at the transducer/wall interface (which is obtained when using air as the fluid), it is possible to calculate the acoustic impedance of an unknown fluid from the slope of a plot of the logarithm of echo energy versus echo number.
Claims38
A method for estimating a property of a fluid, comprising:
- transmitting a first acoustic pulse in a first member that is in contact with the fluid;
- detecting a plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns from an interface between the first member and the fluid;
- subdividing each acoustic pulse echo return in the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns into a plurality of time windows and integrating an energy in each time window over the duration of said each acoustic pulse echo return to obtain the energy in said each of the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns;
- and
- estimating the property of the fluid from the energy in each of the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns.
An apparatus for estimating a property of a fluid, comprising:
- a vessel that contains the fluid;
- an acoustic pulser that transmits a first acoustic pulse into a first vessel member that is in contact with the fluid;
- a transducer that detects a plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns from an interface between the first vessel member and the fluid;
- and
- a processor configured to subdivide each acoustic pulse echo return in the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns into a plurality of time windows and integrating an energy in each time window over the duration of said each acoustic pulse echo return to obtain the energy in each of the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns and estimates the property of the fluid from the energy in said each of the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns.
A method for estimating a property of a fluid, comprising:
- generating a first acoustic pulse in the fluid that is in contact with a first member;
- detecting a plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns from an interface between the first member and the fluid;
- subdividing each acoustic pulse echo return in the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns into a plurality of time windows and integrating an energy in each time window over the duration of said each acoustic pulse echo return to obtain the energy in each of the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns;
- and
- estimating the property of the fluid from the energy in each of the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns.
An apparatus for estimating a property of a fluid, comprising:
- a chamber that contains the fluid;
- a transmitter that sends a first acoustic pulse into the fluid that is in contact with a first chamber member;
- a transducer that detects a plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns from an interface between the first chamber member and the fluid;
- and
- a processor configured to subdivide each acoustic pulse echo return in the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns into a plurality of time windows and integrating the energy in each time window over the duration of each acoustic pulse echo return to obtain the energy in each of the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns and estimates the property of the fluid from the energy in each of the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns.
A downhole tool which is deployed in a borehole for estimating a property of a downhole fluid, comprising:
- a vessel that contains the fluid;
- an acoustic pulser that transmits a first acoustic pulse into a first vessel member that is in contact with the fluid;
- a transducer that detects a plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns from an interface between the first vessel member and the fluid;
- and
- a processor configured to subdivide each acoustic pulse echo return in the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns into a plurality of time windows and integrating the energy in each time window over the duration of each acoustic pulse echo return to obtain the energy in each of the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns and estimates the property of the fluid from the energy in each of the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns.
A method for estimating a property of a fluid, comprising:
- generating a first acoustic pulse in the fluid that is in contact with a first member;
- detecting a plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns from an interface between the first member and the fluid;
- subdividing each acoustic pulse echo return in the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns into a plurality of time windows and integrating the energy in each time window over the duration of each acoustic pulse echo return to obtain the energy in each of the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns;
- subtracting root mean square noise from the energy in each of the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns;
- and
- estimating the property of the fluid from the energy after subtraction of the noise in each of the plurality of acoustic pulse echo returns.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.