JP2008145117A - Grain flow measurement device - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To realize a grain flow measurement device capable of correctly measuring a flowing state of a wide variety of grains by directly monitoring the flowing state of grain movement in real time. <P>SOLUTION: In measuring a flow speed or the like of grains in a grain flow measurement device 1, an end of an image fiber 3 is inserted into a tube wall 2, and a recording part 7 of a camera 6 as an imaging device is provided at the other end. A recorded image of the camera 6 is processed by a personal computer 8, a movement speed is measured by difference in phases between first and second recorded images to calculate a flow rate or the like. An objective lens, an eyepiece lens and further an optical filter or the like are used at the end of the image fiber in doing so. In addition, a phase difference detecting semiconductor element may be used as the imaging device, and an optical mouse sensor part of an optical mouse may be further used. In order to measure the movement speed from the recorded image of the grain flow by the imaging device, calibration takes place beforehand by recording an object whose movement speed is known, a disk rotating at a predetermined speed, for example. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a particle flow measuring device that detects the flow state of particles in a fluidized bed using particles, and further the flow state of various particles and powders in a gasifier, a combustion device, a particle circulation dehumidifier, and the like.

  Fluidized bed utilizing treatment equipment is used in various fields in which particles are put into a fluidized state and various substances are mixed therein, and the substances are treated. In particular, the particles are mixed with substances at high temperatures. The high-temperature treatment is used as a coal combustion device, a coal gasification device, as a waste treatment device, or as a drying device for various substances.

  Further, a particle circulation type air conditioning system has been proposed in which the particles of the dehumidifying agent are circulated between the dehumidifying portion of the ambient air and the regenerating portion for drying it. In this particle circulation type air conditioning system, the desiccant particles are used in the same manner as in the technique of reacting in the fluidized state of the particulate fluid medium used in the gasifier by the air from the air blowing port disposed below. It has also been proposed to perform the treatment in a fluidized state by blowing air for air conditioning or regeneration.

  It is extremely important to know how the particle group is flowing in the processing using the fluidized bed used in various fields in order to perform desired processing control. For this reason, various methods for measuring the amount of flowing particles have been proposed. For example, a method is used in which the flowing particles are switched for a certain period of time using a butterfly valve or the like, and measured based on the weight of the deposited particles. It has also been proposed to measure the weight of fluid particles and the like existing in the loop seal chamber below the downcomer section using a strain gauge or the like (Patent Document 1).

  However, in this method, since a certain time is required, measurement in real time cannot be performed, and a special additional device is required for switching the flow path. Furthermore, the technique described in Patent Document 1 has a problem that the temperature dependency of the sensor is high and correction is difficult.

  There is also a method of estimating the amount of particle circulation by measuring the amount of particle circulation under a predetermined operation condition such as air velocity in advance and detecting the operation condition at that time. However, this method has the problem that when the environmental conditions such as the temperature conditions change even if the operating conditions are the same, there is no problem of confirming whether or not it is the actual value, and the real-time particle circulation rate is measured. I can't.

  Furthermore, it is possible to take a video image of the particle group that is actually flowing from the outside, and use a two-dimensional FFT or the like to detect the phase difference by PIV, spatial filter method, etc., and the particles in the plane of the image It is also conceivable to measure the moving speed. However, this method takes time to calculate, and there are many doubts as to whether it can be applied to circulation monitoring of a circulating fluidized bed because it has no measurement results.

  There is also a method for estimating a value that varies depending on the amount of particle circulation, such as the height of a particle group passing through a weir and the collision pressure against a plate or the like. However, this method is not to measure the movement of the true particle group, but to estimate it. Therefore, the error will increase depending on the measurement conditions, and the temperature will depend on the sensor. There is a problem that can not be.

  In addition, the method of measuring the velocity of the flowing particle group flowing down in the downcomer part that is most stably flowing in the circulating path of the flowing particle, for example, by visual measurement, using an optical fiber, or using an electrostatic sensor There is also. Among them, the method using an optical fiber is a method that uses an optical sensor such as a photoelectric sensor, a photoelectric switch, an infrared sensor, or a laser sensor to measure the amount of flowing particles present in a unit time. Is called. However, in this method, the down-comer descent rate can be measured using the light emission of particles in the combustion furnace, but the light emission is not so large in the gasification furnace where the reaction treatment is performed at a relatively low temperature, and it can be used as it is. Can not. In addition, it is highly dependent on particles, and is difficult to apply to systems in which physical properties such as particle size change in a reaction field.

As a countermeasure, the applicant of the present application has proposed a method of measuring the flow rate of flowing particles and measuring the amount of flowing particles as shown in FIG. 5, for example (Patent Document 2). This method is described in detail in the same document, but in summary, the cold heat source supply pipe 25 for cooling the fluidized particles in the circulation path of the fluidized particles such as the downcomer section 29, and the fluidized particles are heated to heat the fluidized particles. At least one of the oxygen supply pipes 26 for blowing oxygen into the particles is disposed, and an upstream temperature detection optical fiber 27 and a downstream temperature detection optical fiber 28 are disposed downstream thereof. As a result, the particle circulation rate can be obtained by heating or cooling the particles upstream where the flowing particles circulate and measuring the circulation speed of the particles according to the time difference in which the temperature change is detected by each optical fiber and the distance between both optical fibers. That's it.
JP 2003-185116 A JP 2005-233460 A

  The above technique proposed by the applicant of the present application can be effectively applied to a gasification furnace in which a reaction process is performed at a relatively low temperature, and an accurate particle circulation amount can be obtained. This method requires cold supply or oxygen supply, and further requires two optical fibers to be installed, resulting in a larger apparatus and a relatively expensive apparatus. In addition, if the distance between two points to be measured is shortened, only local information is obtained, and if the distance between two points is increased to some extent, it becomes difficult to identify the corresponding information of the signal at each point. It is also necessary to consider an appropriate sampling period.

  Therefore, the present invention proposes a measurement method for fluidized particles that can solve the above-mentioned various problems, and allows the moving speed including the direction of particle movement to be monitored in real time, and a wide variety of methods are available. The main object of the present invention is to provide a particle flow measuring device capable of measuring the moving speed of a wide variety of particles such as particles having a wide range of particle diameters, thereby accurately measuring the flow rate of these particles.

  In recent years, optical mice for computers are one of the devices that have become available relatively inexpensively. The optical mouse has a small number of pixels but a photographing element, and performs image processing of about 6500 Hz for a high-speed one from 1500 Hz, and transmits a mouse movement amount signal to a personal computer. Therefore, we think that online monitoring can be performed by introducing the information of particle swarm movement to the detection part at the bottom of this optical mouse, we confirmed this by experiment, and further developed this method to a more versatile measurement method, The present invention has been achieved.

  More specifically, the particle flow measuring device according to the present invention more specifically includes an image fiber having one end inserted into the moving flow path of the particle group, an image capturing device disposed at the other end of the image fiber, and the image. An image processing arithmetic device that processes an image photographed by the photographing device and computes at least the moving speed of the particle group from the photographed image is provided.

  Another particle flow measuring apparatus according to the present invention is characterized in that, in the particle flow measuring apparatus, an objective lens, an eyepiece lens, or both lenses are provided at an end of the image fiber.

  Another particle flow measuring apparatus according to the present invention is characterized in that in the particle flow measuring apparatus, the image photographing device is a phase difference detection semiconductor element.

  Another particle flow measuring apparatus according to the present invention is the particle flow measuring apparatus, wherein the image photographing device is a mouse for a personal computer.

  Another particle flow measuring device according to the present invention is the particle flow measuring device, wherein the data obtained by the image photographing device corresponds to image data obtained by photographing a surface whose moving speed is known in advance and an actual velocity. It is characterized by calibration.

  Since the present invention is configured as described above, the moving speed including the direction of particle movement can be directly monitored in real time in the moving state of the actual particles. It is possible to accurately measure the flow state of particles such as the moving speed and flow amount of various particles.

  The present invention addresses the problem of enabling direct measurement of the flow state of particles in real time, with an image fiber having one end inserted into the particle movement channel and the other end of the image fiber. This is realized by including an arranged image capturing device and an image processing operation device that processes an image captured by the image capturing device and calculates at least the moving speed of particles from the captured image.

  Embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 (a) shows the most basic particle flow rate measuring device of the present invention. For example, in a fluidized bed in a gasification furnace or in a tube wall 2 of a particle flow tube 1 of a particle circulation type desiccant air conditioner. One end portion 4 of the image fiber 3 is inserted, and a photographing portion 7 of a camera 6 as an image photographing device is disposed in the vicinity of the other end portion 5, and the movement of the particles in the particle flow tube 1 is performed at high speed by this camera 6. Shooting state. Depending on the conditions, the light from the light source X is guided from one end of the image fiber, or a separate light source is provided near the detection end to facilitate photographing. The captured image of the particle movement state by the camera 6 is input to the personal computer 8 and image processing is performed to obtain data on the movement direction and movement amount of the particle group within a predetermined time, thereby measuring the flow amount of the particle group. be able to. Note that the personal computer 8 performs image processing and calculates the moving speed and the like of the photographed object from the photographed image. Therefore, the personal computer 8 that performs this operation can be called an image processing arithmetic device.

For speed detection by such image processing, a speed detection method by moving screen photography, which has been widely used conventionally, can be adopted. In that case, for example, particles by the method shown in FIGS. The particle moving speed V _d and the particle flow amount Q _d in the flow tube 1 can be obtained. That is, after the first photographed image as shown in FIG. 5B is taken and the second photographed image as shown in FIG. 10C is obtained, the phase difference between the two images is detected, and as shown in FIG. as can be determined in the x-direction movement amount C _x and y direction movement amount C _y of both images, this value can correspond to the particle movement amount of particles flowing pipe.

This data can determine the actual amount of movement C _L of the particles as shown in FIG. 1 (e) (1), whereby the moving velocity V _L of the unit time t of a particle as shown in FIG. (2) Can be obtained by V _L = C _L / t. Also, when the particle flow tube 1 is downcomer portion of the fluidized bed, the particles drop velocity V _d of the downcomer portion can be determined by V _{d =} C y / _t as shown in FIG. (3) . Further, the particle flow amount Q _d in the downcomer portion can be obtained by Q _d = V _d ρ _p (1−ε _d ) A _{d as} shown in FIG. Note here [rho _p is the particle density, epsilon _d is the porosity of the downcomer portion, A _d is the cross-sectional area of the downcomer portion.

  In the present invention, when detecting the state of particles in the particle flow tube 1, not only the image fiber 3 is used but also an end portion of the image fiber 3 in the particle flow tube 1 as shown in FIG. The objective lens 9 may be provided, and the eyepiece 10 may be provided on the photographing unit 7 side of the camera 6. In addition, an optical filter 11 may be provided in the photographing unit 7 of the camera 6 as illustrated.

  By using the objective lens 9 and the eyepiece lens 10 in this way, an image of a wide range of particle flow states can be captured even using the thin image fiber 3, and this can be magnified and clearly photographed with a camera. By providing the optical filter 11, it is possible to adjust the change in the photographed image due to the change in the coloring state due to the temperature of the particle, and more accurately measure the particle moving speed and the particle flow amount.

  In the above embodiment, the moving state of the particles in the particle flow tube 1 guided by the image fiber 3 is photographed by the camera 6. For example, as shown in FIG. A phase difference detection semiconductor element 12 as an image photographing device is directly provided on the eyepiece 10 of the lens, and an image is captured and input to the personal computer 8 to measure the particle flow velocity and the particle flow amount by the same method as described above. You can also.

  The present invention can also use an optical mouse that is used in a normal computer as an aspect of the phase difference detection semiconductor element 12 in the third embodiment. The mode is schematically shown in FIG. 3, and the example shown in FIG. 3 shows an example of experiments. In addition, as described in the above-mentioned “Means for Solving the Problems”, the present invention confirms the usefulness of the present invention by this experiment, and finds that the present invention can be implemented more widely by the respective embodiments. It is a thing. The outline of the experiment is briefly described below.

  The optical mouse used for the experiment was a commercially available optical mouse 13 with a USB connection, and a particle flow device 14 having substantially the same configuration as that of a conventional gasification furnace was prepared. A downcomer in which a fluidized bed was formed and particles dropped. The same end portion of the image fiber 3 as that in the above embodiments is inserted into the portion 15, and the other end portion of the image fiber 3 is directly fixed to the optical mouse sensor portion 16 of the optical mouse 13. The particle flow device 14 supplies high pressure air from the air compressor 17 to the lower part of the downcomer portion 15 via a flow rate controller 19 so that the particles can be fluidized and lowered. The high-pressure air from the air compressor 17 is also guided to the lower end of the riser unit 21 via the flow rate controller 18, and particles from the downcomer unit 15 are supplied to the lower end of the riser unit. High-pressure air can be supplied to the lower end portion of the riser portion 21 that opens in the tangential direction in the cyclone 20 disposed above the downcomer portion 15.

  Thereby, when the air compressor 17 is operated, the particles in the downcomer unit 15 are in a fluid state, and the particles from the downcomer unit 15 are conveyed upward by the high-pressure air supplied from the lower end of the riser unit 21 to the cyclone 20. Erupts in a tangential direction. The particles in the cyclone 20 fall spirally, the powder is discharged together with the flowing air supplied from below, and only the particles are opposed to the flowing air and are deposited on the downcomer portion by the gravity. The flow state of the accumulated particles is guided to the optical mouse sensor unit 16 by the image fiber 3.

  An image obtained by the optical mouse sensor unit 16 is an image obtained by a known optical mouse, and is substantially the same as that shown in FIGS. The signal processing circuit in the optical mouse 13 processes the image in the same manner as in FIG. 1 (d), and inputs the processed signal to the personal computer 8. In the personal computer 8, the calculation of FIG. 1 (e) is performed based on the signal of FIG. 1 (d) by software different from the software that performs signal processing from the mouse 22 that is used in a normal personal computer. The moving speed V and the flow amount Q can be calculated. A normal mouse calculates data such as the moving direction, moving speed, and moving amount of the mouse from the data shown in FIG. 1D, and uses the calculated data for pointer movement on the monitor screen. In addition, since the optical mouse includes a light source, an image can be obtained without using a separate light source, but a light source similar to the above may be used as necessary.

  When obtaining particle movement speed data from an image obtained by photographing the movement state of particles guided by an image fiber using the optical mouse as described above, for example, a photographed image of the mouse is used in advance using an assay device as shown in FIG. By obtaining correlation data of the moving speed of the photographic object, it is possible to easily and accurately measure. In the example shown in FIG. 4, the rotating disk 24 is rotated at a predetermined speed by the motor 23, and the end portion of the image fiber 3 is arranged close to the surface 25 of the rotating disk 24.

  The optical mouse sensor unit 16 of the optical mouse 13 is disposed at the other end of the image fiber 3 in the same manner as in FIG. 4, and an image photographed with the optical mouse is processed in the same manner as described above. By matching the data related to the moving speed of the processing result and the speed of the arrangement portion of the end portion of the image fiber on the surface 25 of the rotating disk 24 obtained in advance, the moving speed of the image obtained with the optical mouse can be accurately determined. Can be calibrated. This calibration method can be similarly employed in the above-described embodiments even when a camera or a phase difference detection semiconductor element is used.

  As a result of comparison between the data actually operated using the device as described above and the visual measurement that has been performed conventionally, each measurement method has its own characteristics, but by using an optical mouse, the actual particle It was confirmed that the moving speed and flow amount of the particles can be accurately measured on-line in a state where the particles are flowing. Since such an apparatus can be obtained at a low cost, it can be widely used particularly for experiments. Furthermore, when measuring the flowing particles in the particle treatment layer of the gasification furnace and the particle circulation type desiccant air conditioner, it becomes possible to perform more accurate and reliable measurement using the apparatus as in the first to third embodiments. .

Industrial application fields

  In principle, the present invention does not depend on particle physical properties such as particle size or environmental atmosphere such as temperature, and thus can be widely used in the powder field. In other words, as described above, it can be used for gasifiers, combustion devices, waste treatment devices, particle circulation dehumidifiers, etc., and even hot particles can be measured directly and accurately in the actual flow state. It is. In addition to such particles, the present invention can also be used to measure fine particles that have become powdery due to a smaller particle diameter, and thus can be used in a wide range of fields, such as a powder transportation device.

It is a schematic diagram of Example 1 of the present invention. (A) is a schematic diagram of the second embodiment, and (b) is a schematic diagram of the third embodiment. It is a schematic diagram of Example 4. It is a schematic diagram of the mouse | mouth data calibration apparatus in the Example 4. It is a figure which shows the particle | grain flow measuring apparatus which the present inventors previously proposed.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Particle flow apparatus 2 Tube wall 3 Image fiber 4 One end part 5 Other end part 6 Camera 7 Imaging | photography part 8 Personal computer 9 Objective lens 10 Eyepiece 11 Optical filter 12 Phase difference detection semiconductor element 13 Optical mouse 14 Particle flow apparatus 15 Downcomer part
16 Optical mouse sensor unit 17 Air compressor 18 Gas flow controller for riser 19 Gas flow controller for downcomer 20 Cyclone 21 Riser unit 22 Mouse
23 Motor 24 Rotating disk 25 Surface

Claims (5)

An image fiber having one end inserted into the particle flow path;
An image capturing device disposed at the other end of the image fiber;
A particle flow measuring device, comprising: an image processing arithmetic device that processes an image captured by the image capturing device and calculates at least a moving speed of particles from the captured image.   2. The particle flow measuring apparatus according to claim 1, wherein an end of the image fiber is provided with an objective lens, an eyepiece lens, or both lenses.   2. The particle flow measuring device according to claim 1, wherein the image photographing device is a phase difference detecting semiconductor element.   2. The particle flow measuring device according to claim 1, wherein the image photographing device is a mouse for a personal computer.   5. The data obtained by the image photographing apparatus is calibrated by associating image data obtained by photographing a surface of a target whose movement speed is known in advance with an actual speed of a photographing part separately obtained. The particle flow measuring device according to claim 1.

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