(213c) Development of Measurement Techniques for Multiphase Flows Using Electrical Resistance Tomography

Multiphase flows can be seen in many natural phenomena, and also are crucial within various industries. However, it has always been an enormous scientific challenge to quantify properties for multiphase flows due to their complex features and the lack of diagnostic tools. Electrical resistance tomography (ERT) has been applied in a wide range of scientific and engineering fields, such as geophysical study, clinical diagnosis, chemical or mineral process measurement, and process optimization. Typically, ERT is used to obtain information about processes occurring in vessels and pipelines by mounting an array of electrodes, equally distanced, to the outside of a vessel, as shown in Figure 1. There is also another way to place ERT sensor inside a vessel and move it to any location for measurement as shown in Figure 2. Over last two decades, in my research to extract information and data analysis from ERT conductivity distribution images, ERT system has been developed to measure instantaneous local physical quantities for multiphase flows in chemical engineering and mineral processing, including: i) Estimate bubble size in flowing foams; ii) Identify bubble coalescence zones in multiphase flows; iii) Measure turbulence in multiphase flows; iv) Monitor chemical reaction and fluid mixing.