Electrical capacitance tomography system is useful for obtaining information about the spatial distribution of a mixture of dielectric materials inside a vessel. This research aims to obtain real-time monitoring on the composition for liquid mixture in conveying pipeline. ECT is a non-invasive, non-intrusive and non-destructive technique that can measure the flow level inside a pipeline. In order to increase the image resolution and accuracy of current tomography research, a study on 16 electrodes sensor ECT system has been developed. The developed system has the flexibility to be assembled and moved from a pipeline to another. The intelligent on-board flexibility and mobility sensor technique is a new technique for ECT system. The system can be assembled in different diameter sizes of pipeline, and numbers of electrodes sensor can be reduced accordingly depending on the pipeline sizes without the need to redesign the electrodes sensor. The new design is equipped with high speed data processing rate data acquisition system and high speed data reconstruction. A microcontroller that support full-speed USB data transfer rate has been designed as the centralization control unit. In order to improve data result, iterative algorithm has been implemented in this system in order to obtain a precise image of the flow in the pipeline. As a result, the ECT system is able to reconstruct various multiphase flow images.

About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -Owing to the high cost of data acquisition (DAQ) card in the market, the purpose of this paper is to develop a high speed, low-cost microprocessor and ethernet controller-based DAQ in optical tomography system. Design/methodology/approach -Microprocessor is the main core to control the sensor circuitry while ethernet controller has the responsibility of transmitting data to PC and thus insuring the reliability of data. Findings -The data transfer rate will be up to megabytes per seconds. In this optical tomography system, projection geometry combining two orthogonal and two rectilinear in one layer is modeled. Originality/value -This paper presents a new application in optical tomography.

This paper details a work carried out to measure gas hold-up profiles in a liquid column using a pair of ultrasonic transducer. The gas hold-up profiles from 1.85 mm to 7.7 mm diameter are of interest in this investigation. The measurement setup consist of ultrasonic transducer, an experimental column, signal conditioning circuit, and a digital storage oscilloscope. The experiment was conducted using several gas hold-up profiles and the relationship between the ultrasonic amplitude and the profile were deduced. A finite element analysis was carried out to further verify the results. This paper explains how one could use ultrasonic transducer to estimate the gas hold-up profiles in a liquid column.

With the rapid evolution of electro-acoustical technology, ultrasonic tomography has made considerable progress in industry. An ultrasonic tomography system provides non-invasive and non-intrusive flow visualisation that enhances the understanding of fluid flow processes. The function of ultrasonic tomography is to continuously monitor the dynamics of liquid flow without interrupting the flow. The ultrasonic tomography technique is fully supported by a front-end hardware system. The front end is defined as all the hardware circuitries, including the ultrasonic transducer up to the Analogue-to-Digital Convertors (ADCs), even though the primary focus is the analogue signal processing components. We present here the challenges and trade-offs in the implementation of a front-end system by first explaining the basic operation of such a system, and then indicating what particular performance parameters are needed to ensure optimal system operation. Based on the results from our research studies, we propose an improved front-end multi-level solution that is more accurate than previous solutions and provides real-time measurement capability.

This paper presents the simulative studies on the use of ultrasonic sensors for steel pipe investigation. Using the acoustic impedance, calculations are done to estimate the propagated ultrasound signal based on its reflection and transmission percentage. The ultrasound wave propagation simulations are then further studied using a modeling software to simulate and visualize the wave interactions between different boundaries. Experiments done with real hardware have shown correlation with the numerical and simulation studies.