Industrial Monitoring of Hydrocyclone Operation using Electrical Resistance Tomography

J. Bond1, J. C. Cullivan2, N. Climpson3, T. Dyakowski4, I. Faulks1, X. Jia2, J. A. Kostuch, D. Payton3, M. Wang2, S. J. Wang4, R. M. West2 and R. A. Williams2*

1Camborne School of Mines, University of Exeter, Redruth, Cornwall, TR15 3SE,UK

2 Centre for Particle & Colloid Engineering, School of Process, Environmental and Materials Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

3 English China Clays International Ltd, John Keay House, St Austell, Cornwall PL25 4DJ, UK

4 Department of Chemical Engineering, UMIST, P.O. Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD Email: r.a.williams@leeds.ac.uk

The authors are members of The Virtual Centre for Industrial Process Tomography

Abstract - The development and application of electrical resistance tomography for on-line auditing of an industrial hydrocyclone separation is reported. The work demonstrates the retrofitting of electrodes into a commercially available separator and their use in laboratory, pilot plant and plant scale investigations of clay refining. A number of new and significant applications are described including: the development of methodologies to allow observation of the occurrence of faults in underflow discharge (spraying, roping, blockage); accurate measurement of the air core size for different operational conditions; direct calculation of solid concentration profiles based on parametric reconstruction of conductivity data in three dimensions.

Keywords: centrifugal separation, ERT, hydrocyclones,