Greg Dake
Member
Greetings,
On one of our process systems we have a sterile air skid which provides sterile air for a bottle sterilization process. The sterile air produced by this skid is later mixed with H202 for the sterilization process.
We are adding a couple of flowmeters to this skid. We need to measure air flow which is simple. The hard part is we'd like to be able to measure steam flow as well. The pipe will either have sterile air OR steam flowing through it. I know how to setup a flowmeter to measure only air flow or only steam. The problem is that I don't know of an engineering unit that can quantify both airflow and steam. The airflow and steam are potentially going to be a critical control point.
The easy solution is to add two flowmeters, one for the air flow and one for mass flow for the steam. We want to avoid another pressure drop a second flowmeter would add.
Another solution would be to infer how much steam was flowing based on pressure and the pipe diameter. The temperature sensor could ensure it was actually steam. The problem is that this would not be very accurate.
It really comes down to : Is there an engineering unit that can quantify both airflow and amount of steam past a given point with one flowmeter?
We're using ABB Swirl flowmeters FS4000/ST4's.
TIA,
Greg
On one of our process systems we have a sterile air skid which provides sterile air for a bottle sterilization process. The sterile air produced by this skid is later mixed with H202 for the sterilization process.
We are adding a couple of flowmeters to this skid. We need to measure air flow which is simple. The hard part is we'd like to be able to measure steam flow as well. The pipe will either have sterile air OR steam flowing through it. I know how to setup a flowmeter to measure only air flow or only steam. The problem is that I don't know of an engineering unit that can quantify both airflow and steam. The airflow and steam are potentially going to be a critical control point.
The easy solution is to add two flowmeters, one for the air flow and one for mass flow for the steam. We want to avoid another pressure drop a second flowmeter would add.
Another solution would be to infer how much steam was flowing based on pressure and the pipe diameter. The temperature sensor could ensure it was actually steam. The problem is that this would not be very accurate.
It really comes down to : Is there an engineering unit that can quantify both airflow and amount of steam past a given point with one flowmeter?
We're using ABB Swirl flowmeters FS4000/ST4's.
TIA,
Greg