Abstract
Crystallization is a significant procedure in the manufacturing of many pharmaceutical and solid food products. In-situ electrical resistance tomography (ERT) is a novel process analytical tool (PAT) to provide a cheap and quick way to test, visualize, and evaluate the progress of crystallization processes. In this work, the spatial accuracy of the nonconductive phantoms in low-conductivity solutions was evaluated. Gauss–Newton, linear back projection, and iterative total variation reconstruction algorithms were used to compare the phantom reconstructions for tap water, industrial-grade saturated sucrose solution, and demineralized water. A cylindrical phantom measuring 10 mm in diameter and a cross-section area of 1.5% of the total beaker area was detected at the center of the beaker. Two phantoms with a 10-mm diameter were visualized separately in noncentral locations. The quantitative evaluations were done for the phantoms with radii ranging from 10 mm to 50 mm in demineralized water. Multiple factors, such as ERT device and sensor development, Finite Element Model (FEM) mesh density and simulations, image reconstruction algorithms, number of iterations, segmentation methods, and morphological image processing methods, were discussed and analyzed to achieve spatial accuracy. The development of ERT imaging modality for the purpose of monitoring crystallization in low-conductivity solutions was performed satisfactorily.
Highlights
Industrial process tomography and monitoring is an important field of applied research, which uses many types of modern sensors to monitor and evaluate the current state of the physical or chemical processes
Various imaging techniques involving the mapping of convection, temperature, and concentration for the measurement of growth rate and micromorphology of crystal surfaces have been utilized [7] for this purpose
The differences between the currents detected for tap water and the industrial-grade saturated solution is minimal due to the use of tap water for sucrose production processes, whereas in Figure 6b, the demineralized water has the current range from 0.025 mA
Summary
Industrial process tomography and monitoring is an important field of applied research, which uses many types of modern sensors to monitor and evaluate the current state of the physical or chemical processes. It has applications in a wide range of industries such as food, pharmaceuticals, and the petroleum industry. Based on the underlying physical principle involved and characteristics (i.e., offline, online, or in situ) of the process, a variety of process analytical technology (PAT) sensors are utilized in process control systems. Analytical process technologies for crystallization process monitoring and control, such as attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) and UV-visible spectroscopy, have successfully separated solid and liquid phases [8]. Online PAT imaging techniques, such as Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) [10,11,12,13]
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