Montell Carrington Limited produces polyethylene and polypropylene nibs, which are sold in bulk form to companies who use them to make products for the consumer market. The nibs are stored in 30 storage bunkers, each with a capacity of 500 tonnes. The external distribution of nibs is achieved using 40 tonne road tankers that are filled from each of the bunkers using gravity feed. Plant Operators at the bunkers fill the road tankers with the nibs and currently there is no metering of the nibs loading process. At present the road tankers are filled to an accuracy of +/- 4 % and this is dependent on the skill of the operator. Tankers that are overfilled have the excess product removed from the tanker and recycled into a mixed grade bunker, which is sold at a lower cost. Work was undertaken at the Manchester Metropolitan University, in collaboration with Montell, to develop a Variable Density Flowmeter based on an Electrical Capacitance Tomography system. The work was undertaken to validate its use as means of improving and controlling the loading of road tankers. The system enabled the mass flow of nibs loaded into tankers to be measured accurately, within +/-2 %, and hence ensure a cost effective delivery of the bulk material. The flowmeter (260mm diameter) was situated between the bunker discharge outlet valve and the tanker. Measurement of the density distribution across the pipe, using Process Tomography, enabled the mass flow into the road tankers to be determined. The Montell Process Tomography (MPT) system was a PC based system incorporating Texas Instruments C40 parallel processors and a 12 electrode capacitance measuring system. Capacitance measurements were achieved using an AC bridge detection circuit working at 100 kHz, a demodulator and a back projection algorithm used to obtain the process images. Proposals for the development of a Virtual Instrument tomographic imaging system using National Instrument Labview will be presented as future means enabling a tomographic measuring system to be adopted for this type of industrial application.


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    Title :

    Cost effective loading of road tankers using process tomography


    Additional title:

    Kosteneffizientes Beladen von Tankwagen mit Hilfe der Prozesstomographie


    Contributors:
    Deloughry, R. (author) / Young, M. (author) / Pickup, E. (author) / Barratt, L. (author)


    Publication date :

    2001


    Size :

    8 Seiten, 6 Bilder, 1 Tabelle, 7 Quellen



    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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