Analysis of chaotic behaviour of gas-solids flows in cyclone separators using tomography

To characterise the time-series measurements of the nonlinear dynamic systems in Cyclone Separators, Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) has been used to determine the solids concentration and the deterministic chaos theory has been adopted for analysis. During the experiments, linear back projection (LBP) was used to reconstruct images for on-line monitoring. The raw data was then interpreted in terms of invariant characteristics, such as the Kolmogorov entropy and correlation dimension. Initial tests have manifested strong variations in these chaotic invariants and the characteristic “signatures” of deterministic chaos. The preliminary results show that the Kolmogorov entropy and correlation dimension are “indicators” of the variation in gas-solids flow patterns. The Kolmogorv entropy, correlation dimension and projections of reconstructed attractors using chaotic time series analysis are very useful for classifying the gas-solids dynamic behaviour of cyclone separators and very useful for comparison of test data with numerical CFD models.