Smart tomographic sensors for advanced industrial process control
A decisive gap in the process industry is the lack of qualified distributed process parameter measurements for optimal control. Process tomography is a ground-breaking technology to bridge this gap. Just with the recent development in high-power massive parallel computing this technology has gained the required real-time capability. TOMOCON as a European network of leading academic and industrial partners from different sectors dedicates its efforts in research and training towards development of tomography-based industrial process control. With that it shall generate new scientific and technical knowledge in this emerging field; develop and demonstrate new technological solutions of advanced industrial control by tomographic sensors; align tomography-based process control with concepts of knowledge-based control, big data analysis and advanced human-machine interfaces; and enhance the scientific and transferable skills of early stage researchers to meet future needs of the industry. Together with world-leading industrial sensor and control solution providers, process engineering and production companies TOMOCON shall demonstrate the functionality of tomography-assisted process control in four industry-relevant demonstration cases, which serve as benchmarks to demonstrate improvements in energy and resource efficiency as well as product quality. That is: control of inline fluid separation, control of microwave drying processes, control of continuous metal casting, and control of batch crystallization processes.