Investigation on concentration distribution and mass flow rate measurement for gravity chute conveyor by optical tomography system

This paper describes the design, computer simulation and experimental evaluation of a novel optical tomography instrumentation system that has been recently developed for the measurement of concentration profile and mass flow rate of particles in a gravity chute convey pipeline. The system employs novel multi-light sources and multi-light beams array to create the optical sensing field interrogating the entire cross-section in testing pipe. Comprehensive computer simulation and numerical calculations show that the proposed method is theoretically correct and the programmed algorithm is effective in the image reconstruction. This method has been characterized by real time, in situ and continuous measurement. The experiment results have demonstrated that the optical tomography technique based on the multi-sources fan-shaped geometry can be an effective approach to reflect the concentration distribution and mass flow rate of particles over the pipe cross-section. The mass flow rate of particles derived from extinction principle in some assumption circumstances has shown a good agreement to the projection data of light beams. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.