Electrical Tomography: A Review of Configurations, and Application to Fibre Flow Suspensions Characterisation

Abstract

Understanding the behaviour of suspension flows continues to be a subject of great interest considering its industrial relevance, regardless of the long time and effort dedicated to it by the scientific and industrial communities. Information about several flow characteristics, such as flow regimen, relative velocity between phases, and spatial distribution of the phases, are essential for the development of exact models for description of processes involving pulp suspension. Among the diverse non-invasive techniques for flow characterisation that have been reported in the literature for obtaining experimental data about suspension flow in different processes, Electrical Tomography is one of the most interesting, since it presents perhaps the best compromise among cost, portability, and, above all, safety of handling (indeed there is no need to use radiation, which requires special care when using it). In this paper, a brief review and comparison between existing technologies for pulp suspension flow monitoring will be presented, together with their strengths and weaknesses. Emphasis is given to Electrical Tomography, because it offers the above-mentioned compromise and thus was the strategy adopted by the authors to characterise different flow processes (solid–liquid, liquid–liquid, fibres, etc.). The produced portable EIT system is described, and examples of results of its use for pulp suspension flow characterisation are reported and discussed.

Electrical Tomography Hardware Systems for Real-Time Applications: a Review

“…Applications Industry construction [7], process [9]- [14], material condition monitoring [15] Biomedical lung [5], [16]- [19], demodulation [20], heart [8], cell culture [21] Geophysics [3] Reconstruction quality methods [22]- [25], Machine learning methods [26],…”

“…EIT measures the conductivity/resistivity of a region by using electrodes placed at the boundary of the target region, whereas ECT measures its dielectric value. There is a special case of EIT which measures the resistivity of a purely resistive domain and is known as Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) [4]. One major advantage of ET systems is that they do not have any ionizing effect on the target region and do not expose it to any hazardous radiations.…”

Measurement-Based Domain Parameter Optimization in Electrical Impedance Tomography Imaging

“…Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a non-invasive method to deliver cross-sectional images. The non-invasive character, available cost, portability, and safe use have allowed the technique to find wide application in diverse branches and disciplines of industry and science, such as biomedicine [ 1 , 2 , 3 ], geophysics [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ], industrial chemistry [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ], and material engineering [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ].…”

Efficient Image Reconstruction Algorithm for ECT System Using Local Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter

“…This research will focus on electrical tomography methods [13], [14]. The electrical tomography systems, such as the Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) [15], [16], Magnetic Induction Tomography (MIT) [17]- [19], and Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) [20]- [24] are interesting.…”