Combinational Multimodality Tomography System for Industrial Multiphase Flow Imaging

In recent decades, process tomography (PT) has received widespread attentions in industrial multiphase flow monitoring. Traditional single-modality tomography is usually sensitive to a specific physical parameter and is widely used in two-phase flow monitoring. However, when the fluids are more than two phases, such as oil/gas/water three-phase flow, the complexity of existence forms of three fluids brings a challenge to single-modality tomography. Multimodality tomography can obtain more information, possessing the unique advantages in three-phase flow monitoring. In this article, a combinable multimodality tomography system based on industrial compact peripheral component interconnect (CPCI) bus is designed. The system includes electrical resistance tomography (ERT), electrical capacitance tomography (ECT), and ultrasonic transmission tomography (UTT), supporting independent work or free combination of different modalities for different measurement requirements. The data acquisition and transmission are controlled by the field programmable gate array (FPGA), which can synchronize the asynchronous clock signals of different boards through flexible programming. Interboard communication based on CPCI bus supports the coordination and synchronization of multimodal boards, and also facilitates the expansion of system functions in the future. Static experimental results show that the designed multimodal system can coordinate multimodal data acquisition timing, and exhibit better performance in acquisition speed, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and image reconstruction.