Electrical tomographic imaging for bubble column measurement and control

A preliminary study of using electrical resistance tomographic imaging for bubble column measurement and control has been conducted. A number of methods for identifying flow regimes (e.g. bubbly and churn-turbulent flows) have been developed. An optimisation method is used to automatically search for the flow rate corresponding to the maximum interfacial area and determine a set-point for a PID controller. A simple flow-parameter control, based on bubble fluctuation as represented by derivatives of dynamic imaging, is reported. This work is believed to be the first published case of realtime on-line process control using electrical resistance tomography.