Rheality awarded funding to develop ‘acoustic fingerprint’

The technology - which aims to reduce waste in Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), food, petrochemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing - measures fluid rheology. This is important in production lines for liquids such as ketchup or shampoo that need to have a specific consistency to come out of the bottle.

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Rheality was set up to realise the benefits of a fluid-sensor system developed by Dr Daniel Hefft and Professor Federico Alberini at the university’s School of Chemical Engineering. Using a pin that vibrates as fluid moves around it, an acoustic sensor then converts the vibrations into an electrical signal, and an artificial intelligence machine learning algorithm analyses the signal and coverts it into a rheological value.

The entire system is mounted on the pipe to deliver continuous monitoring of the fluids inside, and can be calibrated to determine the presence of air bubbles or particulates in liquids, or to indicate the end-stage of a chemical reaction. This real-time measurement provides continuous monitoring, which has many benefits for manufacturing industries: current practice is to take samples and test them off-line, requiring production to be stopped. If the fluid has the wrong properties, the entire batch has to be re-worked or scrapped.