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PurposeThe use of pneumatic conveying of solid bulk over long distance has become a popular technique due to low operational cost, low maintenance requirement, layout flexibility and ease of automation. The purpose of this paper is to identifity the flow regime in a pneumatic conveyor system by electrodynamic sensor placed around the pipe using fuzzy logic tools.Design/methodology/approachElectrical charge tomography is used to detect the existence of inherent charge on the moving particles through the pipe. Linear back projection algorithm and filtered back projection algorithm are employed to produce tomography image. Baffles of different shapes are inserted to create various flow regimes, such as full flow, three quarter flow, half flow and quarter flow. Fuzzy logic tools are used to identify different flow regimes and produce filtered back concentration profiles for each flow regime.FindingsThe results show significant improvement in the pipe flow image resolution and measurement.Originality/valueThis paper presents a flow identifier method using electrical charge tomography and fuzzy logic to monitor solid particles flow in pipeline.

Electrodynamic sensors are used in the process industry because they are low cost and robust. Though frequently used very little fundamental work on them has been reported. This paper describes an investigation into characteristics of hemispherically and rectangularly shaped sensors. Two parameters are investigated, the effect of sensor area on sensitivity and the spatial filtering effect of the sensor due to its finite size. Models are proposed and results obtained using them compared with experimental values.