Monitoring of Erosion in a Pneumatic Conveying System by Non-intrusive Acoustic Sensors – A Feasibility Study

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a study where the feasibility of a non-invasive acoustic measurement method was tested for monitoring of erosion in a pneumatic conveying system during the dilute-phase conveying of sand. Measurements were collected by the acoustic method from a pipe bend in a test area of a pneumatic conveying system which were found in previous studies to be especially afflicted with erosion. Reference measurements of the loss of mass caused by erosion were obtained by removing a detachable piece from the test area and weighing it before reattaching it to the pipeline. Partial least squares regression was used to calibrate models relating the acoustic measurements to the response variable. Cross-validation techniques were used to evaluate the feasibility of the method for monitoring of erosion in the pipe bend and to investigate whether the method would be affected by noise and vibrations generated by the pneumatic conveying system.