Spatial-temporal modelling for industrial process tomography

The gas-solids flow in a dense pneumatic conveying many interesting features related to their 3-dimensional and unsteady nature. The flows can be investigated by an electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) system. The tomographic data captured by ECT system are processed by means of functional analysis to allow a better understanding of the three-dimensional flow behaviour. Such an analysis enables the investigation of the solids behaviour in a turbulent gas-solids flow. In this approach the whole flow is defined as an n-dimensional image vector, which describes the instantaneous and local changes in solids concentration. Preliminary results of the behaviour of gas-solids´ flow by the proposed method are presented.