Abstract
Electrical Tomography is an imaging tool that is able to extract the distribution of electrical properties from an object in a non-intrusive and non-invasive way. This report will mainly discuss two types of electrical tomography techniques: electrical resistance tomography (ERT) and electrical capacitance tomography (ECT). ERT is sensitive to conductive materials (water, chemicals and most aqueous materials) whereas ECT is sensitive to dielectric materials, for example, oil, gas and plastics. Electrical tomography techniques also benefit from its non-intrusive and its high speed features. Because of these advantages, ERT and ECT can potentially be used as the condition monitoring tool for many industrial processes. Since the principles of electrical tomography had been proposed in the 1980s, electrical tomography has been successfully implemented in many industrial applications, for example, mixing, multi-phase flow, pneumatic flow, non-destructive testing and quality control.Since the 1980s, there has been much research in this field of technology. However, much less effort has been put into utilising the outcomes of academic and research studies and effectively incorporating them into industrial applications. For example, 3D tomography has been developed for years; however, it has not yet been fully utilised in industry, most likely due to constraints such as insufficient computational processing speed and the lack of tomography post-processing technique. In order for industrial users to benefit from scientific research, research outcomes must be tailored more closely to satisfying the needs and constraints of industry and to make improvements in the technology more user friendly.
As electrical tomography technologies have been successfully implemented into many industrial fields, the author will go through some of those applications in this dissertation. The challenges and difficulties of adapting the new technology for industrial process environments will be discussed. Furthermore, it will be investigated what actions need to be taken in order to reduce the technology gap and thus, ease future implementation.
Future potential applications of electrical tomography will also be discussed in this dissertation. The author has listed a few potential applications to which electrical tomography could add benefit. Each application will have its own challenges due to different process conditions and process output requirements. These applications will be discussed separately and some initial proof of concept results will also be demonstrated.
| Date of Award | 24 Sept 2018 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
|
| Supervisor | Manuchehr Soleimani (Supervisor) |
Cite this
- Standard