PXI-based Electrical Capacitance Tomographic Imaging System Applied to Flow Control and Mass Flow Measurement

R. Deloughry, I. Ibrahim, P.V.S Ponnapalli, P. Lingard, and D. Benchebra

Department of Engineering and Technology, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester M15GD, UK, Email: r.deloughry@mmu.ac.uk

ABSTRACT

Typical ECT systems for use in industrial applications were based on dedicated hardware, such as the Texas Instrument C40 parallel processing system developed at MMU for measurement of large scale loading of road tankers. The industrial application indicated that a robust proprietary ECT system would be advantageous. The research program at MMU into modular generic Virtual Instrument Tomographic imaging systems are based on a National Instruments (NI) PXI 8186 Embedded Pentium Controller system and NI LabView Graphical programming software. This has enabled a move towards using robust industry based proprietary equipment. Dual 8 and 12 electrode serial and parallel imaging systems have been developed and applied to control the flow of plastic pellets in a pneumatic flow rig using Neural Networks techniques. Axially spaced sensing arrays have been developed to enable the system to be used to measure the mass flow of pellets. The structure, design philosophy and limitations of the systems will be discussed and the results of the flow control application presented.

Keywords Process Tomography, ECT, LabView, PXI, Neural Network, Mass Flow