A new method for measuring wetness of flowing steam based on surface plasmon resonance

A novel method for real-time and inline wetness measurement based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) is presented in this paper. The Kretschmann geometry is adopted to excite surface plasmon waves in our measurement system. In order to prevent water coating, an ultrathin layer of hydrophobic coating is formed on the surface of Au layer. The experimental results show that the level of steam wetness can be obtained via the area ratio of water and air on the prism, which is determined by analyzing the SPR spectrum of wet steam based on a Gaussian model. In addition, during the online measurement of flowing wet steam wetness, significant shifts in the resonant position of the SPR spectrum occurred, which can be attributed to the strong interaction of the adjacent water droplets.