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.