Modeling of a Tank System for Liquid Level Measurement by Means of Electrical Tomography

Neumayer and H. Zangl

Institute of Electrical Measurement and Measurement Signal Processing, Kopernikusgasse 24/4, A-8010 Graz, Austria, Graz University of Technology Email: neumayer@tugraz.at

In this paper the applicability of methods from electrical capacitance tomography for the determination of fill levels is investigated. For immiscible liquids the determination of fill level reduces the order of a tomography system to a 1D system. However, a tomography approach has attractive benefits, as i.e. liquid levels of stacked liquid layers can be determined. In order to use low cost integrated circuits for capacitive sensors we investigate a system with a reduced number of independent measurements. The coupling effects for a 3D and a 2D model are investigated and the performance of the system is evaluated for certain scenarios, showing that a simple 2D reconstruction approach fails for stacked liquid layers.

Keywords Fill level measurement, optimization, modeling