Development of Electrical Capacitance Tomography for Solids Mass Flow Measurement and Control of Pneumatic Conveying Systems

*Arko A, *Waterfall R. C, *Beck M. S

Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, UMIST Industrial Process Tomography

PO Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK Arko@fs2.ee.umist.ac.uk

*Dyakowski T

Department of Chemical Engineering, UMIST

Sutcliffe P

NEU Engineering Ltd Stockport, Cheshire SK7 5DA, UK

Byars M

Process Tomography Ltd

86 Water lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5BB, UK

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

Abstract - This paper describes a novel development of a solid mass flow meter incorporating a combination of a twin-plane Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) System and a DSP-based multi-channel direct cross correlator. In addition to flow imaging, the ECT system is able to measure the concentration and velocity of the solids moving in the conveying pipe. By using inferential measurement, it is possible to get the mass flow rate by combining the concentration and velocity measurements. Industrial evaluation of the measuring system was undertaken and results and challenges are presented.

Keywords: ECT, mass flow, cross correlation, pneumatic conveying