The paper presents a review of current achievements in the Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) in relation to its possible applications in the study of phenomena occurring in fluidised bed reactors. Reactors of that kind are being increasingly used in chemical engineering, energetics (fluidised bed boilers) or industrial dryers. However, not all phenomena in the fluidised bed have been thoroughly understood. This results in the need to explore and develop new research methods. Various aspects of ECT operation and data processing are described with their applicability in scientific research. The idea for investigation of temperature distribution in the fluidised bed, using multimodal tomography, is also introduced. Metrological requirements of process tomography such as sensitivity, resolution, and speed of data acquiring are noted.

The paper presents the method of on-line diagnostics of the bed temperature controller for the fluidized bed boiler. Proposed solution is based on the methods of statistical process control. Detected decrease of the bed temperature control quality is used to activate the controller self-tuning procedure. The algorithm that provides optimal tuning of the bed temperature controller is also proposed. The results of experimental verification of the presented method is attached. Experimental studies were carried out using the 2 MW bubbling fluidized bed boiler.

The paper presents proposal of a model of the fluidized bed boiler adapted for use in model-based controllers e.g. predictive, adaptive or internal model control (IMC). The model has been derived in the form of transfer function matrix which allows its direct implementation in the controller structure. Formulated model takes into consideration the principal cross-coupling between process variables which enables the opportunity to search for feasibility of decoupling control. The results of the identification of the dynamics of the 2 MW industrial bubbling fluidized bed boiler using the proposed model form was presented. According to the experimental data it was found that despite of introduced simplifications presented model allows the boiler behavior prediction.

In the current study, we test the discrimination of four basic English tone contours in monosyllabic words by Polish learners using an AXB task and we compare these results to the results of an identification test. Discrimination does not require access to phonological labels and is claimed to tap core auditory mechanism. Relatively high discrimination performance by Polish learners and poor identification performance indicate that difficulties with correct identification of English tones are solely difficulties with labelling.

Geminates (such as the double /k/ in Polish lekki “light”) form a group of consonants that are mainly characterized by longer durations than the corresponding singletons. Most of the research has concentrated on durational and spectral properties of geminates in contrast to singletons. Much less attention has been paid to the realization of the voicing contrast in geminates and whether it is differently implemented than in singletons. In the current study, we contribute to this research with the data from Polish stop geminates. To this end, a total of 49 native speakers of Polish produced all stop geminates and corresponding singletons in wordforms of the same phonological make-up. The measurements included closure duration, voicing ratio, duration and mean intensity of the release burst. The results showed that the voicing ratio was 0.69, classifying Polish stop geminates as mildly devoiced. There was a significant speaker-dependent variability in that some speakers devoiced all geminates, while others either partially devoiced or never devoiced. The analysis of interactions between geminates and singletons revealed that geminates cancelled voicing cues observed in singletons such as longer durations and lower intensity of the release burst. We discuss the current results in terms of voicing implementation in Polish and in relation to other geminating languages.