Industrial monitoring of hydrocyclone operation using electrical resistance tomography

The development and application of electrical resistance tomography for on- line auditing of an industrial hydrocyclone separation is reported. The wor k demonstrates the retrofitting of electrodes into a commercially available separator and their use in laboratory, pilot plant and plant scale investi gations of clay refining. A number of new and significant applications are described including: the development of methodologies to allow observation of the occurrence of faults in underflow discharge (spraying, roping, block age); accurate measurement of the air core size for different operational c onditions; direct calculation of solid concentration profiles based on para metric reconstruction of conductivity data in three dimensions. (C) 1999 Pu blished by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.