Process Compliant Electrical Impedance Instrumentation for Wide Scale Exploitation on Industrial Vessels

In order to apply electrical impedance (EIT), and other modalities, against industrial unit operations it is requisite to employ a sensor architecture which is compliant with the subject process such that it will not detrimentally effect its efficiency nor the integrity of the associated vessel structure. Traditionally symmetrical electrode architectures have been adopted for electrical tomography by virtue of their compatibility with conventional 2D image reconstruction approaches. During the progress of the ProceMon collaborative project, novel electrode architectures have been adopted on a number of large scale industrial process vessels. This has been possible through the integration of finite element model based 3D reconstruction algorithms arising from the EIDORS collaboration. This paper draws upon the experience gained through the practical implementation of EIT on a number of large scale industrial batch production vessels and presents the methodology employed to design process transparent sensing arrays, the associated intrinsically safe instrumentation and the EIDORS image reconstruction technology. In presenting this holistic approach the paper outlines the implications for universal modelling, reconstruction and quantitative analysis of image fidelity made possible through utilising convenient structures found within the normal fabric of a vessel in place of a dedicated electrode array.