Velocity measurement of pneumatically conveyed solid particles using an electrostatic sensor

The paper proposes a method to measure the mean velocity of solid particles based on the spatial filtering effect of the electrostatic sensor. To determine the relationship between the spatial frequency characteristics of the sensor and solid particle velocity, a general formula is derived by analyzing quantitatively the spatial filtering characteristics of the electrostatic sensor along with the accepted assumptions. The effects of the geometric parameters of the sensor, particle velocity distribution, particle concentration distribution over the cross-section of a pneumatic pipeline, particle size, particle material type and frequency resolution on particle velocity measurement accuracy are also discussed in detail. Experiments are performed on a bench-scale gravity-fed particle flow experimental rig to test the performance of the velocity measurement system. The off-line experimental results show that the system repeatability is within ±5% over the velocity range of 2–6 m s−1 for concentrations of solid particles in the range of 0.5–6.0%