Applications of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging in process engineering

During the past decade, the application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging techniques to problems of relevance to the process industries has been identified. The particular strengths of NMR techniques are their ability to distinguish between different chemical species and to yield information simultaneously on the structure, concentration distribution and flow processes occurring within a given process unit. In this paper, examples of specific applications in the areas of materials and food processing, transport in reactors and two-phase flow are discussed. One specific study, that of the internal structure of a packed column, is considered in detail. This example is reported to illustrate the extent of new, quantitative information of generic importance to many processing operations that can be obtained using NMR imaging in combination with image analysis.