Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) Imaging of a Metal-Walled Solid-Liquid Filter

E.L.Yuen1, R.Mann1, T.A.York2, and B.D.Grieve3

1 Dept Chemical Engineering, UMIST, Manchester M60 1QD, UK, r.mann@umist.ac.uk

2 Dept Electrical and Electronic Engineering, UMIST, Manchester M60 1QD, UK York@fs5.ee.umist.ac.uk

3 Syngenta, Huddersfield Works, Leeds Road, Huddersfield, HD2 1FF, UK Bruce.Grieve@agman.zeneca.com

The authors are members of the Virtual Centre for Industrial Process Tomography (VCIPT)

ABSTRACT

Tomographic imaging using electrical resistance offers new opportunities for monitoring the operation of solid-fluid filtration processes. Earlier results on a non-conducting vessel have shown how filtrate level, cake laydown, cake malformations and cake cleaning by rinsing can all be imaged and quantitifed for dynamic process monitoring. Using a 16-sensor ring-array mounted on the perimeter of the filter base support plate, an application of Wang’s metal-wall strategy has been successfully implemented on a 1 metre semi-tech scale filter. Instrumentation used a new configuration comprising a precision LCR meter coupled to a BTO switch matrix. A direct comparison with the conventional adjacent strategy has shown how gross current shunting is avoided. Non-conducting and conducting phantoms were clearly imaged and located by a simple sensitivity adjusted linear back projection algorithm.

Keywords solid liquid filtration, electrical resistance tomography, metal-walled filter