High Resolution Electrical Capacitance Tomography using insights from Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Compressed Sensing

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The performance of many key industrial processes, from amine scrubbing in carbon capture technology to Fisher-Tropsch synthesis of next generation liquid fuels, is determined by the complex dynamics inherent to multiphase flows. In an effort to aid our understanding of these flows, advanced tomographic techniques including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) have been developed. However, the spatial and temporal resolution of these techniques is limited, which has restricted their ability to provide the fundamental experimental evidence needed to improve our understanding of multiphase flows. This project seeks to improve the spatial and temporal resolution of both ECT and MRI by exploiting recent developments in the field of compressed sensing. The overall goal of this study will be to develop methods to study the dynamics of multiphase flows over a hierarchy of length scales, from the micro-scopic processes such as interfacial drag through to macro-scopic processes such as flow regime transitions. To achieve this, it is proposed to use MR and ECT in a complementary manner. This has great importance industrially and academically because MR cannot be used for large-scale reactors, whereas ECT, which could provide almost equivalent information, is applicable to both laboratory- and process-scale equipment. Furthermore, ECT has not yet been accepted as a widespread diagnostic tool because of uncertainty surrounding the image reconstruction. By performing a direct comparison of ECT and MRI on similar scale systems this project will be able to provide a quantitative demonstration of the accuracy and resolution that is achievable with ECT.