Performance Assessment Framework for Electrical Capacitance Tomography Based Mass Concentration Estimation in Pneumatic Conveying Systems

Pneumatic conveying is used in various industrial fields for the transportation of bulk materials. Reliable flow meters are of high interest for the efficient operation and control of such systems. Electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) is a promising technique for flow measurements in pneumatic conveying systems. Several publication demonstrated the basic applicability of ECT for this measurement task. This work in contrast aims for a systematic performance assessment of ECT based mass concentration estimation, which is a crucial parameter for the determination of the mass flow rate. A holistic model of the measurement process is presented and a measurement procedure is proposed to validate the model with stationary material distributions. The validated framework gives access to statistical estimation error analyses for various pneumatic conveying flow conditions. The presented framework is a practical tool for the development and improvement of ECT based flow meters as it enables analyses of different measurement setups to an extend, that would be difficult to achieve by means of measurement experiments on test rigs only.