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Industrial tomography is an emerging technology used to visualise internal behaviour of industrial processes, such as gas/oil/water flows in oil pipelines, gas/solids flows in pneumatic conveyors, and mixing/separation processes in plant vessels. The cross sectional images produced by tomography systems provide valuable information for verification of CFD models, optimisation of equipment design, on-line process monitoring and control.

Expert is recognised as world's leading in electrical capacitance tomography, both in hardware (sensors and transducers, analogue and digital circuits, data acquisition, data communication and computer interface) and software (electro-magnetic field analysis, finite element analysis, computer control, parallel data processing and image reconstruction algorithms). He has proposed many innovative methods for sensor and measuring circuit design, system calibration and image reconstruction and has addressed many challenging industrial applications. He has several patents granted in the tomography area, including an international patent, which has been licensed to Process Tomography Ltd. He recently developed a new ECT system, which improves image quality dramatically. He is also the principal investigator of several on-going projects.

Expert carried out a major national research project on the design of electrostatic gyroscopes. He was responsible for the design of electrostatic suspension systems and worked on modelling of drift errors of gyros and a very accurate strap-down north-finder. The overall project was awarded 1st prize by the 6th Industry Ministry of China.

Multi-phase flow measurement remains a notorious task. A particular difficulty is that all available flow meters are flow-regime-dependent. Industrial tomography is based on cross-sectional images, offering an opportunity of developing flow-regime-independent multi-phase flow meters. Expert was the principle researcher and technical manager of an EPSRC/DTI Industrial Measurement Systems LINK project, aimed to measure gas/oil/water 3-component flows, using tomographic imaging and cross correlation techniques. He was responsible for the design of high-speed imaging and correlation hardware and software, together with the overall system integration

Up to now there is no efficient instrument for monitoring multi-interfaces in crude oil separators. Expert worked on a SERC/Marinetech research project for measurement of multi-interfaces and foam detection for 3-phase separators using segmented capacitance sensors. Currently a multi-modality sensing system is being developed for monitoring and control of crude oil separators.

Expert has worked on several projects related to micro-controller applications, including an electrical muscular stimulation instrument (patented and marketed), hand-held DDS signal generator and intelligent car wiper controller. He was also a technical consultant to Tanike Computer and Instrument Co.

As a Science Advisor, he helped the Chinese Academy of Sciences in developing an electrical capacitance tomography instrument for measuring fluidised beds for coal combustion.He helped ShangQiu Normal University in developing a small capacitance meter, which is being used for an NSFC-funded project in vehicle detection. He helped Tainjin University in advising research in multiphase flow measurement and setting up a new MSc course in instrumentation. He helped Process Tomography Ltd. in setting up the company and developing a product from the research outcome.