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The purpose of this paper is to conduct a review of types of tomographic systems that have been widely researched within the past 10 years. Decades of research on non-invasively and non-intrusively visualizing and monitoring gas-liquid multi-phase flow in process plants in making sure that the industrial system has high quality control. Process tomography is a developing measurement technology for industrial flow visualization.

A review of types of tomographic systems that have been widely researched especially in the application of gas-liquid flow within the past 10 years was conducted. The sensor system operating fundamentals and assessment of each tomography technology are discussed and explained in detail.

Potential future research on gas-liquid flow in a conducting vessel using ultrasonic tomography sensor system is addressed.

The authors would like to undertake that the above-mentioned manuscript is original, has not been published elsewhere, accepted for publication elsewhere or under editorial review for publication elsewhere and that my Institute’s Universiti Teknologi Malaysia representative is fully aware of this submission.

Since the importance role of ultrasonic tomography (UT) in industry, especially in oil industry, to produce noninvasive and nondestructive plane images, research on UT system with a metal pipe conveyor is investigated. The produced cross-sectional images are used for detecting the concentration of solid and liquid mixture inside the pipe, noninvasively. In practice, due to application of metal pipes as the conveyor of oil mixture so the capability of manufacturing an UT system with a metal pipe is investigated in this paper. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Finite element software (COMSOL Multiphysics 3.5) for visualizing the structure of pipe with mounted sensors on the periphery of the pipe is used. The manner of ultrasonic wave propagation on different layers on various frequencies and finding the time of flight for transmission mode signal and lamb mode signal are achieved by the means of done simulations. Finding the proper ultrasonic sensor base on its efficiency is the main step of designing an UT system. This is done by estimating the resonance frequency of sensor due to the manner of ultrasonic wave propagation in different frequencies shown in simulation results.

Due to simulation results, lamb wave is a permanent propagation mode of ultrasonic wave which makes interference in measuring process of straight path signal and it is impossible to remove. Relief of the mentioned problem finding an optimum frequency to decrease the affection of lamb wave in detecting point. Optimum frequency of ultrasonic wave to satisfy the objective is 45 kHz which is measured by considering of mathematic of ultrasonic wave propagation in different layers. The reaching time of straight path signal and lamb wave signal in opposite sensor as the receiver are 5.5 and 4.6 μs, respectively.

This investigation is the first step to perform the UT in a noninvasive method to produce the cross-sectional images of metal pipe. Due to the wide application of metal pipes as the conveyor of the liquids/gases, metal pipe for the UT application is studied in this research.

The purpose of this paper is to view the flow concentration of the flowing material in a pipeline conveyor.

Optical tomography provides a method to view the cross sectional image of flowing materials in a pipeline conveyor. Important flow information such as flow concentration profile, flow velocity and mass flow rate can be obtained without the need to invade the process vessel. The utilization of powerful computer together with expensive data acquisition system (DAQ) as the processing device in optical tomography systems has always been a norm. However, the advancements in silicon fabrication technology nowadays allow the fabrication of powerful digital signal processors (DSP) at reasonable cost. This allows the technology to be applied in optical tomography system to reduce or even eliminate the need of personal computer and the DAQ. The DSP system was customized to control the data acquisition of 16 × 16 optical sensors (arranged in orthogonal projection) and 23 × 23 optical sensors (arranged in rectilinear projections). The data collected were used to reconstruct the cross sectional image of flowing materials inside the pipeline. In the developed system, the accuracy of the image reconstruction was increased by 12.5 per cent by using new hybrid image reconstruction algorithm.

The results proved that the data acquisition and image reconstruction algorithm is capable of acquiring accurate data to reconstruct cross sectional images with only little error compared to the expected measurements.

The DSP system was customized to control the data acquisition of 16 × 16 optical sensors (arranged in orthogonal projection) and 23 × 23 optical sensors (arranged in rectilinear projections).

Owing to the high cost of data acquisition (DAQ) card in the market, the purpose of this paper is to develop a high speed, low‐cost microprocessor and ethernet controller‐based DAQ in optical tomography system.

Microprocessor is the main core to control the sensor circuitry while ethernet controller has the responsibility of transmitting data to PC and thus insuring the reliability of data.

The data transfer rate will be up to megabytes per seconds. In this optical tomography system, projection geometry combining two orthogonal and two rectilinear in one layer is modeled.

This paper presents a new application in optical tomography.

The purpose of this paper is to present an implementation of ultrasonic tomography simulation to investigate the laminar flow of stratified liquid between water and oil.

The velocity of ultrasonic waves varies in water, oil, and different composition of water and oil. The composition of water and oil can be determined from the measurement of this propagation time. Sixteen pairs of ultrasonic sensors are mounted non‐invasively around the periphery of an acrylic pipe. The grease is used as the coupling material to mount these ultrasonic sensors. Different compositions of water and oil are used and the propagation times of the ultrasonic waves through the medium are measured. The composition of the water and oil of the flow is determined from the reconstructed images.

The paper finds that information about the distribution of the components within the sensing zone is obtained from the sensors' measurements. These measurements are then used to reconstruct the cross‐sectional image which can be analyzed to provide information, such as concentration of the flow components, the flow condition, velocity, mass flow rate, and identification of the distribution of mixing zones in stirred reactors and interface measurement in complex separation processes. The image can also be analyzed quantitatively for subsequent use to improve process control or develop models to describe individual process.

The paper shows that industries which may benefit from this technique could be the raw material processing industry, large‐scale and intermediate chemical production, and food biotechnology.

There are demands from the industry to have a modern application of Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) system which is mobile and agile. One of the factors why such system is needed in the industry is because of the requirement to install the measurement sensors in a hostile and harsh environment which demands a special kind of ECT system. This paper will discuss the features of mobile or portable ECT which is more practical to be implemented in the harsh environment. Besides, the implementation of cloud computing and wireless technology in the portable ECT systems is also discussed. This review outlines some key features of portable or in another word mobile ECT as a complete system.

There are demands from the industry to have a modern application of ECT system which is mobile and agile. One of the factors why such system is needed in the industry is due to the requirement to install the measurement sensors in hostile and harsh environment which demands a special kind of ECT systems. This paper will discuss the features of mobile or portable ECT which is more practical to be implemented in the harsh environment. Besides, the implementation of cloud computing and wireless technology in the portable ECT systems is also being discussed. This review outlines some key features of portable or in another word mobile ECT as a complete system.

This review outlines some key features of portable or in another word mobile ECT as a complete system. A lot of improvement can be done to realize a reliable and stable ECT system. It is seems that in the near future, machine to machine communication will become the main stream.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study improvement that can be done to develop a portable ECT system which is reliable and stable. Besides, the implementation of cloud computing and wireless technology in the portable ECT systems is also discussed.

Solid particles flowing in a pipeline is a common mode of transport in industries. This is because pipeline transportation can avoid waste through spillage and minimizes the risk of handling of hazardous materials. Pharmaceutical industries, food stuff manufacturing industries, cement, and chemical industries are a few industries to exploit this transportation technique. For such industries, monitoring and controlling material flow through the pipe is an essential element to ensure efficiency and safety of the system. The purpose of this paper is to present electrical charge tomography, which is one of the most efficient, robust, cost‐effective, and non‐invasive tomographic methods of monitoring solid particles flow in a pipeline.

Process flow data are captured by fitting an array of 16 discrete electrodynamic sensors about the circumference of the flow pipe. The captured data are processed using two tomographic algorithms to obtain tomographic images of the flow. Then a neural network tool is used to improve image resolution and accuracy of measurements.

The results from the above technique show significant improvements in the pipe flow image resolution and measurements.

The paper presents electrical charge tomography, which is one of the most efficient, robust, cost‐effective, and non‐invasive tomographic methods of monitoring solid particles flow in a pipeline.

Circular pipelines are mostly used for pneumatic conveyance in industrial processes. For optimum and efficient production in industries that use a pipeline for conveyance, tomographic image of the transport particles is paramount. Sensing mechanism plays a vital role in process tomography. The purpose of this paper is to present a two‐dimensional (2‐D) model for sensing the characteristics of electrostatic sensors for electrical charge tomography system. The proposed model uses the finite‐element method.

The domain is discretized into discrete shapes, called finite elements, by using a MATLAB. Each of these elements is taken as image pixels, on which the electric charges carried by conveyed particles are transformed into equations. The charges' interaction and the sensors installed around the circumference, at the sensing zone of the conveying pipeline are related by the proposed model equations. A matrix compression technique was also introduced to solve the problem of unevenly sensing characteristics of the sensors due to elements' number's concentration. The model equations were used to simulate the modeled electrostatic charge distribution carried by the particles moving in the pipeline.

The simulated results show that the proposed sensors are highly sensitive to electrostatic charge at any position in the sensing zone, thereby making it a good candidate for tomographic image reconstruction.

Tomographic imaging using finite element method is found to be more accurate and reliable compared to linear and filtered back projection method.