TomoFlow - Tomographic Flow Measurement for Coal Dusts

The aim of the proposed research project is the development of a flow meter for pneumatically conveyed coal. The new flow meter has to be immune to varying moisture contents of the coal. Further it has to provide a functionality to determine the current flow regime. We propose a flow meter with a hybrid signal processing concept. In order to determine the flow regime, the flow meter implements model based signal processing techniques known from electrical capacitance tomography (ECT). This allows for an image based analysis of the transport process. To make the flow measurement robust against varying properties of the coal, we propose a new concept based on impedance spectroscopy. An impedance based analysis system measures the dielectric properties of the coal. This information is incorporated into a material model, which supplements the mass flow measurement.