Ultrasonic level sensor

[TimWilborne]

Ok just curious, thanks

 

[MiPilot]

OK......How would you arrange these. The bin is 135 foot tall and about 95 feet in diameter and the contents should weigh about 22,500 Tons.

Or maybe they won't work. I believe these to have full aeration floors.

Thanks for the input though....

Steve

 

[PeterW]

Because they paid me to...sorry couldn't resist... The compnay I work for we do it alot... The reason is batching... if your pumping the grain into a blender and you want to pump more than one material into the blender at a time the Loss In Weight you would have on the silo would tell you what you have discharged out of the silo and into your blender...

Note: on silo's you generally use more than one load cell because in most cases your supporting the entire silo on the load cells. Depending on who you ask a 3 load cell array works better than 4 but if you do the math that is pretty much "bunk"

Did a lot of batching with a major food manufacturer and what you say makes some sense, but its not the way I we did things.

We never batched straight from the mass storage silo, we always transferred product into day bins and batched from there.

We did have rotary valves which we calibrated often that sent a measured amount into the day bins, we matched the incoming to the outgoing.

We never pumped grain (or in our system flour) its blown.

We had bofor's on the silo's which were mainly used for re-stocking signals, the batched quantities were controlled via the rotarty valves. We also had level probes as back-up.

The measured batch amount was done in loss of weight from day bins.

We added multiple products at a time into the batching tanks, only water was measured in by the weight in the tank, the rest was by flowmeters or loss of weight in other systems.

Sometimes one or more of the load cells are dummy cells, depends on the system.

 

[PeterW]

By the way, I'm interested in the radar, sounds like something we could use for detecting walls on moving equipment.

 

[danw]

For 'moving walls', be aware that Siemens' radars are designed for level and the levels in huge silos tend not to change rapidly (a 100' silo doesn't fill in a minute). There are some choices for response times, but be sure to check that whatever response times are available are suitable for detecting a 'moving wall' in a suitable timeframe.

I've seen ultrasonics used for dumper railcar detection at coal-fired generating plants.

 

[Clay B.]

By the way, I'm interested in the radar, sounds like something we could use for detecting walls on moving equipment.

It depends on if you can mount a reflector. There is a long range laser used on gantry cranes that might do what you want. I do not have the exact info infront of me but pm if this would be soemthing you could use.

 

[Clay B.]

Did a lot of batching with a major food manufacturer and what you say makes some sense, but its not the way I we did things.

We never batched straight from the mass storage silo, we always transferred product into day bins and batched from there.

We did have rotary valves which we calibrated often that sent a measured amount into the day bins, we matched the incoming to the outgoing.

We never pumped grain (or in our system flour) its blown.

We had bofor's on the silo's which were mainly used for re-stocking signals, the batched quantities were controlled via the rotarty valves. We also had level probes as back-up.

The measured batch amount was done in loss of weight from day bins.

We added multiple products at a time into the batching tanks, only water was measured in by the weight in the tank, the rest was by flowmeters or loss of weight in other systems.

Sometimes one or more of the load cells are dummy cells, depends on the system.

We generally do not do vacuum conveyoring and the silos are not 135' tall.

We have used day bins when the amount processed required a high amout of accuracy. I think the cut off is .1 percent. The other reason we would use day bins is if the shot to supply ratio was rather large.

 

[Clay B.]

OK......How would you arrange these. The bin is 135 foot tall and about 95 feet in diameter and the contents should weigh about 22,500 Tons.

Or maybe they won't work. I believe these to have full aeration floors.

Thanks for the input though....

Steve

Actually they make load cells in that weight range. As far as aeration is concerned there are work arounds. The problem with load cells the genrealy rule of thumb is 1% in a dynamic process. So in a 20 ton application your error is +/- 1000 lbs.

My question would be what is the reason for measuring the silo. How accurate do you need to be.

If your just looking for silo level, I would use one of the sensors mentioned earlier.

 

[blufke03]

Madison

Hello,
If you are still looking for information on ultrasonic level sensors, you should visit Madison Company's website. They have a large selection of sensors and similar things, plus information on the products so that you know that you are picking the right sensor for your needs.
I hope that this helps!

 

[robw53]

Just to add my 2 cents or would it be 2 pence? anyway we have several silo's at our bakery for flour's sugars etc and we use load cells to measure the volume in them with no problems