Particle counter?

I'm looking at taking some side work and I have very little idea what it's about at this point. I have a meeting later today to discuss it but I would like to be able to speak intelligently about it. I was told only very basic info from a non-technical type. He said it involved PLC programming for a particle counter. I thought he was talking about some kind of device for the Nuclear industry. I've done some preliminary research and realized he's probably talking about a device that measures contaminants in hydraulic fluid or in clean room air. I've found that some companies are making 4-20mA remote particle counters for this purpose, and that's probably where the PLC comes in.

So does anybody know how these devices are normally used? I'm picturing a network of detectors in various areas of a clean room facility connected to central server that stores logs of data and sends email alerts upon high levels of contamination. Am I barking up the right tree?

we use them to measure dust particulate in the exhaust air for our environmental systems.

its not as simple as you may think.

a word of caution, taking on side work is risky.
Do you have liability insurance?
are you using your own laptop and programming software or are you using the companies?

if your regular employer finds out, you can loose your job as well as have legal troubles for doing work competing against the company you are working for.
it all depends on how they want to handle the situation.

james

Thank you for the word of Caution James.

My current employment status is "unique." It's a long story not worth getting into, but my boss knows I'm taking on side work and is OK with it. The side job does not in any way compete with the main job.

I do not have liability insurance at this time. The side job company has a system in place for me to log hours so I think I will be considered a part-time employee. Not sure about that.

I have the laptop and the programming software but I think they do too, so I will probably use theirs, not sure yet.

What about it is not simple?

strantor said:

What about it is not simple?

Click to expand...

Particle counters, because of the nature of the process, may not have a continuous analog output. The unit of measure for particulates is usually expressed in ppcf (particles/cu.ft.) or its metric equivalent ppcm. Instruments vary in the way they output the measurement; it may be continuous, or may only change output every minute. You will have to look at the instrument's documentation to determine the outputs available and the settings needed to get them.

what Mark said.
our equation is pretty complex due to environmental regs and verification (we are inspected every 6 months).
james

He might be talking about exhaust gas measuring, for example CO is measured in PPM.

The ones we used spat out a string of serial data on request, did a lot of parsing to make sense of it.

I've just come back from the meeting and it is a particle counter to sample from multiple points in a liquid chemical plant.

The particle counter sends info to the PLC via ASCII serial and the PLC controls solenoids to purge and select sample points.