On the concentration models in electrical capacitance tomography for gas-fluidized bed measurements

Electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) has been widely applied in gas-fluidized bed measurements, which however is constrained by the sensor designs, image reconstruction algorithms and concentration models owing to the “soft-field” nature. Among the three factors, the concentration models that map the permittivity to solid concentration distribution are less understood. In this paper we present an experimental investigation on the effects of concentration models for the ECT measurements of gas-fluidized beds containing Geldart’s group A particles. The results show that the bubble velocity, bubbling frequency and fluidization regime transition velocity are intrinsic whatever the concentration model employed. However, the time-averaged solid concentrations measured by ECT with the conventional concentration models are usually higher than the corresponding results obtained by the bed expansion experiments in homogeneous fluidization. It has been further found that the concentration models can significantly influence the threshold selection in identifying the bubbles and surrounding emulsion phase in gas-fluidized beds. Thus, a new concentration model given in the formula of a power function (ϕ=Gα) has been proposed, with the optimal exponent α obtained via the least-square fitting of solid concentration in bed expansion during homogeneous fluidization. The model is robust and the sensitivity analysis shows that the variation of time-averaged solid concentration is negligible (≤ 3%) suppose that α changes by ± 20%.