Embedded system based optical tomography: the concentration profile

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to view the flow concentration of the flowing material in a pipeline conveyor.Design/methodology/approachOptical tomography provides a method to view the cross sectional image of flowing materials in a pipeline conveyor. Important flow information such as flow concentration profile, flow velocity and mass flow rate can be obtained without the need to invade the process vessel. The utilization of powerful computer together with expensive data acquisition system (DAQ) as the processing device in optical tomography systems has always been a norm. However, the advancements in silicon fabrication technology nowadays allow the fabrication of powerful digital signal processors (DSP) at reasonable cost. This allows the technology to be applied in optical tomography system to reduce or even eliminate the need of personal computer and the DAQ. The DSP system was customized to control the data acquisition of 16 × 16 optical sensors (arranged in orthogonal projection) and 23 × 23 optical sensors (arranged in rectilinear projections). The data collected were used to reconstruct the cross sectional image of flowing materials inside the pipeline. In the developed system, the accuracy of the image reconstruction was increased by 12.5 per cent by using new hybrid image reconstruction algorithm.FindingsThe results proved that the data acquisition and image reconstruction algorithm is capable of acquiring accurate data to reconstruct cross sectional images with only little error compared to the expected measurements.Originality/valueThe DSP system was customized to control the data acquisition of 16 × 16 optical sensors (arranged in orthogonal projection) and 23 × 23 optical sensors (arranged in rectilinear projections).