A segmented capacitance tomography for visualizing material distributions in pipeline conveying crude palm oil

A segmented electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) imager for palm oil process monitoring system is constructed and presented in this work.The goal of this study is to use the process monitoring system as an instrument to upkeep the local and foreign palm oil mill. This is to ensure that the monitoring of crude palm oil (CPO) in conveying pipeline during extraction of palm oil mill process flow process is efficiently controlled. The system has the capability to visualize the percentage of liquid that exist within the vessel therefore the data can be utilized to design and create better process equipment in mill process. It will also be used to control some processes in order to boost the quality of crude palm oil and the POME (Palm Oil Mill Effluent) treatment process. Most ECT in earlier research were created rapidly and utilized well in multiphase flow measurement in numerous applications such as in oil and gas industries, gas/solids cyclone, milk flows and fluidized beds. Experimentally, this work investigates the capability of using a twin-plane segmented ECT sensor with 16 portable electrodes using two differential excitation potentials transmitted signal in order to recognize the concentration and velocity profile as well as the phase concentration of crude palm oil related multiphase systems (liquid and gas). The attained concentration profile which is received from the capacitance measurements is capable to provide image of the liquid and gas mixture in the pipeline therefore, the separation process (between oil and liquid waste) becomes much easier and the crude palm oil‟s quality can be dependably monitored. The visualization results deliver information regarding the flow regime, superficial velocity and concentration distribution in two-phase flow-rate measurement system incorporating a liquid flow measuring device. The information obtained is able to help in the process equipment designing, verification of existing computational modeling and simulation techniques. It may also assist in process control and monitoring during the palm oil extraction proces

Study on Influence of Different Gamma-ray Energy on Images of an Industrial CT System

Gamma transmission computed tomography is a powerful imaging techniques that provide a cross-sectional view or a volumetric view of the interior of an object. Therefore, reveal structural information of an object as if it had been cut open for viewing. By utilizing the properties of gamma-ray attenuation, images were reconstructed from photon counting data by gamma-ray sensor. Information revealed on these images depends greatly on resolution of the reconstructed images. In this study, the effect of gamma-ray energy used on a portable CT images is studied.  Lab sample of four different material densities were used with three different gamma-ray sources namely, Am-241, Ba-133 and Cs-137 to study the effect of energy on the reconstructed images. The best reconstructed image that describes the structure of the sample used in this study is from Ba-133 with energy of 356 keV. The results provide information on suitability of the energy used for the range of material density use in this study

Flame imaging using laser - based transmission tomography

This project describes an investigation of a flame imaging system using Laser�Based Tomography. The main purpose is to obtain the concentration profile of the flame to be incorporated in Laser-based transmission tomography measurement system for combustion on-line monitoring. The system can be applied to produce cross sectional images of flame such as that in a combustion chamber. Such a system can be employed to compare the effectiveness of different fuel additives and to monitor the onset of knock with various fuel formulations or cylinder head geometries. The ability to monitor the size, position and velocity of flame fronts in any combustion behavior and emissions. The concentration of this project is to determine the position and velocity of flame fronts in the pipeline by using photodiode (BPX 65) as sensor and Helium Neon Laser as laser sources. Laser will emit to pipe and the emitted light will strike to the photodiode through optical fiber as carry the laser light sources. To completely expand the laser light, the emitted light will collimated by a lens as is passes through the pipe walls. The system employs two orthogonal projections with one laser source. The laser source will supply 12 light beams, so the cross section of the pipe being interrogated by a total of 12 beams. In this case, we assume that the flame is placed in specific places in the measurement cross section and voltage output will calculated by the individual sensor is modeled. Besides the hardware, this project will include an interface user friendly, Visual C++ to visualize the concentration profile of the flam

The wireless notification system for the hearing impaired

The Wrist Alert is intended for the use by the hearing impaired in their home environment. It alerts the user to signals such as smoke detectors and doorbells. These signals are connected to a centralized controller box, processed, and transmitted via a Radio Frequency link to the wireless wristband device. The alerting mechanism employs vibration, a discreet form of notification that helps minimize disruption to everyday life in the household. The Wrist Alert utilizes different vibration patterns to differentiate between designated priority levels and the associated signal sources

A functional link neural network with modified cuckoo search for prediction tasks

The impact of temperature, relative humidity and ozone changes bring a sharp warming climate. These changes can cause extreme consequences such as floods, hurricanes, heat waves and droughts. Therefore, prediction of temperature and relative humidity is an important factor to measure the environmental changes. Neural network, especially the Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) which uses Back Propagation algorithm (BP) as a supervised learning method, has been successfully applied in various problems for meteorological prediction tasks. However, this architecture has still been facing problems which the convergence rate is very low due to the multi layering topology of the network. Thus, this research proposed an implementation of Functional Link Neural Network (FLNN) which composed of a single layer of tunable weight trained with the Modified Cuckoo Search algorithm (MCS). The proposed approach was used to predict the daily temperatures, relative humidity and ozone data. Extensive simulation results have been compared with standard MLP trained with the BP, FLNN with BP and FLNN with CS. Promising results have shown that the proposed model has successfully out performed 14% percentage compared to other network models with reduced prediction error and fast convergence rate

An overview: effectiveness of different arrangement for electrode guard in electrical capacitance tomography

Electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) system is useful to obtain information about the spatial distribution of a dielectric materials mixture inside a vessel. It has been suggested by many researchers previously to use guard electrode in ECT sensors. This paper describes various types of design for guard electrode in Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) sensor. The design of these electrode guards is vital to reduce crosstalk (undesired signals) between the adjacent electrodes (positioned at the outside of the measured pipe) since the crucial signals are only inside the pipe. There are three types of electrode guards designed by various researchers which are radial guard, axial guard with end guard and driven guard. The configuration and the effectiveness of each designed electrode are discussed. Other than that this paper introduced new design of electrode guards which are embedded on electrode sensor instead of placing separately between or around adjacent measuring electrodes as the previous design

Measurement and analysis of water/oil multiphase flow using electrical capacitance tomography sensor

The paper investigates the capability of using a portable 16-segmented Electrical Capacitance Tomo-graphy (ECT) sensor and a new excitation technique to measure the concentration profile of water/oil multiphase flow. The concentration profile obtained from the capacitance measurements is capable of providing images of the water and oil flow in the pipeline. The visualization results deliver information regarding the flow regime and concentration distribution of the multiphase flow. The information is able to help in designing process equipment and verifying the existing computational modeling and simu-lation techniques

Electronic design of portable ECT for crude palm oil quality monitoring system

This paper presents the process of visualizing the composition of a crude palm oil (CPO) during separator process which collects the recovered crude palm oil from the liquid waste before separation process, in order to monitor the percentage· of load waste p1·esent using a tomographic technique by Portable. Electrical Capacitance Tomog­raphy (ECT) so that the process separation {separate oil and water/sludge) becomes much easier and the quality of crude palm oil can be reliably monitored. Palm oils industry is one of the largest production, producer and exporter of palm oil and palm oil prod­ucts countries in the world. Oil Palm was first introduced to Malaysia in year 1875 as an ornamental plant. .Malaysia has the mast ideal climate conditions for growing oil palm. The growth of the palm oil industry in Malaysia has been phenomenal over the last 4 decades. Nevertheless, palm oil industry is one of the most pollution generating agro industries in Malaysia. One of the major problems arises from the oil palm fruit processing is the large amount of wastes generated during the processes. There are two main wastes resulted from operation of a Palm Oil Mill, namely solid waste and liquid waste. The solid waste may consist of palm Kernel shells, mesocary fibers and empty fruit bunches. The liquid waste generated from extraction of palm oil of a wet process comes mainly from oil room after separator or decanter. There is no monitoring system that is currently available in our local palm oil mill to visualize the percentage of load waste present inside the vessel. Therefore, the system is aimed to become an instrument to support the local and foreign palm oil mills to efficiently control in monitoring the quality of crude palm oil flow in the conveying pipeline during extraction of palm oil mill process. The monitoring system is able to visualize the percentage of load waste present inside the vessel so that the data can be used to design better process equipment in mill process or to control certain processes in order to maximize the quality of crude palm oil and the POME treatment process can be improved

Development of Foreign Material Detection in Food Sensor Using Electrical Resistance Technique

Food inspection has been a serious matter in the food industry as the contamination by foreign materials such as metals, bone, plastics and glass in food plays a major impact on the industry. In spite of a great deal of effort to prevent mixing foreign bodies in food materials, food manufacturers have still not been able to detect them. Electrical Resistance Sensor to detect the foreign material in food detection sensor is constructed and presented in this work. This project focuses on how to design and implement the system to detect and distinguish between food and foreign material using resistance concept. The electrode plate of Electrical Resistance Sensor (ERS) is designed using COMSOL Multiphysics Software to see the electric field and contour of the electric potential of the system. The resistance value from the sensor is measured based on the AC Circuit concept. The alternating current from the sensor flows to the charge detector circuit providing the voltage corresponding to the resistance between the electrode pair. The voltage from the charge detector circuit has been amplified by the amplifier circuit to obtained DC output from an AC input signal. The voltage form circuit has been converted from the analog to digital signal using Bluetooth Electronics Application via Arduino Uno through HC-05 Bluetooth module. The Bluetooth Electronics Application is used as a graphical user interface (GUI) to display the condition of the material tested including food and foreign material to a smartphone.  The experiment results show that the electrical resistance sensor are able to detect the foreign material in food by changes of the resistance value. If the food was detected with the foreign material (non-conductive), the value of resistance will decrease due to the flow of electric current

Segmented capacitance tomography electrodes: a design and experimental verifications

A segmented capacitance tomography system for real-time imaging of multiphase flows is developed and pre-sented in this work. The earlier research shows that the electrical tomography (ECT) system is applicable in flow visualization (image reconstruction). The acquired concentration profile ob-tained from capacitance measurements able to imaged liquid and gas mixture in pipelines meanwhile the system development is designed to attach on a vessel. The electrode plates which act as the sensor previously has been assembled and fixed on the pipeline, thus it causes obscurity for the production to have any new process installation in the future. Therefore, a segmented electrode sensor offers a new design and idea on ECT system which is portable to be assembled in different diameter sizes of pipeline, and it is flexible to apply in any number due to different size of pipeline without the need of redesigning the sensing module. The new ap-proach of this sensing module contains the integration intelligent electrode sensing circuit on every each of electrode sensors. A microcontroller unit and data acquisition (DAQ) system has been integrated on the electrode sensing circuit and USB technology was applied into the data acquisition system making the sensor able to work independently. Other than that the driven guard that usually placed between adjacent measuring electrodes and earth screen has been embedded on the segmented electrode sensor plates. This eliminates the cable noise and the electrode, so the signal conditioning board can be expanded according to pipe diameter