Development and application of ECT digital system for online flow measurement

The paper presents the latest development of a digital-based measurement system for electrical capacitance tomography (ECT), that consists of a high-capacity FPGA and fast digital converters. In this system, most functions, e.g. signal generation, phase-sensitive demodulator and low-pass filters, are implemented digitally in FPGA. Tomographic software in Visual C++ has been developed for real-time data acquisition, image re-construction and visualization and parameter calculation. Having been specially optimized for ECT measurement, the custom-built hardware and software are capable of achieving acquisition rate of >; 1000fps. The developed ECT system has been applied in online monitoring of a pneumatic conveying system that is to be used for mine out area refilling. Regional flow parameters could be obtained according to specific subregion division. In addition, having been tested on the pneumatic conveying system for several days, the ECT system is proved to be reliable and durable.