Mass Flow Rate Measurement of Pneumatically Conveyed Particles Through Acoustic Emission Detection and Electrostatic Sensing

Accurate online mass flow rate measurement of pneumatically conveyed particles is desirable to convert a conventional pulverized fuel fired power station into a smart thermal power plant. This paper presents a novel method for the online measurement of the mass flow rate of pulverized fuel through acoustic emission (AE) detection and electrostatic sensing. An integrated sensing head with an AE probe and three sets of electrostatic sensor arrays is developed. The proposed method determines the particle velocity by multi-channel cross correlation of the electrostatic signals and extracts the information about mass flow rate from the AE signal arising from impacts of particles with a waveguide protruding into the flow. An analytical model that relates the energy of the AE signals, the particle velocity and the mass flow rate is established. The sensing head was mounted on vertical and horizontal sections of a 72-mm bore laboratory-scale test rig conveying fine silica particles. Experimental tests were conducted under a range of flow conditions and installation orientations to assess the performance of the developed measurement system. The results demonstrate that the sensing head should be installed in any orientation away from the elbow on the vertical section of a pipe, while for installation on a horizontal pipe the waveguide should be in the horizontal direction. The instrumentation system is capable of measuring the mass flow rate of particles in the vertical pipe with a relative error within ±6.5% regardless of the orientation of the sensing head over the mass flow rate from 7 kg/h to 25 kg/h and the particle velocity from 12 m/s to 30 m/s. Whilst on the horizontal pipe the error is within ±5.8% when the sensing head is installed with the waveguide in the horizontal direction under the same flow conditions.