Application of a high speed ECT system to online monitoring of pneumatic conveying process

The paper presents the latest development of a FPGA-based measurement system for electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) and its application in monitoring pneumatic conveying process. A tomographic software in Visual C++ has been developed, realizing high speed real time data acquisition and communication, image reconstruction, visualization, and process parameter calculation, i.e. regional flow velocity and flow rate. Having been specially optimized for ECT measurement, the custom-built hardware and software are capable of achieving acquisition rate superior to 1000 fps (actual acquisition frequency is 745 fps and 825 fps). The ECT system is applied to online monitor of a pneumatic conveying experimental facility which is to be used in mine area backfilling. The reliability and effectiveness of the ECT system have been verified with months of online test on the pneumatic conveying facility.