Ultrasound process tomography system for hydrocyclones

The implementation of a laboratory-based ultrasound tomography system to an industrial process application is not straightforward. In the present work, a tomography system with 16 transducers has been applied to an industrial 50 mm hydrocyclone to visualize its air-core size and position. Hydrocyclones are used to separate fine particles from a slurry. The efficiency of the separation process depends on the size of the air core within the cyclone. If the core is too large due to spigot wear, there will be a detrimental effect on the slurry throughput. Conversely, if the throughput is increased to an extent where the air core becomes unstable or disappears, the particle separation will no longer take place, and the processed batches may become contaminated. Ultrasound tomography presents a very good tool with which to visualize the size, position and movement of the air core and monitor its behaviour under varying input parameters. Ultimately, it could be used within this application both to control the input flow rate depending on the air core size and to detect spigot wear. This paper describes the development of an ultrasonic tomography system applied to an instrumented hydrocyclone. Time-of-flight data are captured by a dedicated acquisition system that pre-processes the information using a DSP and transfers the results to a PC via a fast serial link. The hardware of the tomography system is described, and cursory results are presented in the form of reconstructed images of the air core within the hydrocyclone.