Reduced Electrical Capacitance Tomography Sensor for Flow Profile Estimation

Pneumatic conveying systems are among the most used transport systems for powdery, granular or dry bulk materials. Knowledge about the flow regime is of crucial importance with respect to the efficiency of the conveying process. Electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) is a noninvasive sensing technology suitable for the estimation of flow profiles. Yet, standard ECT sensors are designed for arbitrary material distributions resulting in a comparatively high number of sensing electrodes. This results in increased efforts in instrumentation and measurement electronics. In this work we present a reduced ECT sensor scheme which is specifically designed for the estimation of flow profiles.