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

许多关键工业过程的性能，从碳捕获技术中的胺洗涤到下一代液体燃料的费托合成，都是由多相流固有的复杂动力学决定的。为了帮助我们理解这些流动，先进的断层扫描技术，包括磁共振成像（MRI）和电容断层扫描（ECT）已经开发出来。然而，这些技术的空间和时间分辨率是有限的，这限制了它们提供基本实验证据的能力，这些实验证据需要提高我们对多相流的理解。该项目旨在通过利用压缩感知领域的最新发展来提高ECT和MRI的空间和时间分辨率。本研究的总体目标将是开发研究多相流动力学的方法，从微观过程（如界面阻力）到宏观过程（如流态转变），跨越长度尺度的层次。为了实现这一目标，建议以互补的方式使用MR和ECT。这在工业和学术上都非常重要，因为磁共振不能用于大型反应堆，而ECT可以提供几乎相同的信息，适用于实验室和工艺规模的设备。此外，由于图像重建的不确定性，ECT尚未被广泛接受为诊断工具。通过在类似规模的系统上执行ECT和MRI的直接比较，该项目将能够提供ECT可实现的准确性和分辨率的定量演示。

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.