Eastern Instruments - Solids Mass Flow and Air Flow Measurement Equipment

There are a lot of solids flow meters on the market these days.  But not all of these devices are the same, even though they may look the same.  Many companies promote their devices as one thing, but underneath the hood they are really something else.  So, how does a plant manager, process engineer, or maintenance manager tell the difference to pick the device they need to get the results they need?  This blog will try to help clarify the difference between two of the most popular solids flow meters, the impact meter or impact flow meter and the centripetal force meter. HOW THEY WORK The Impact Flow Meter: The impact flow meter goes by many different names like impact meter, impact scale, impact weigher or impact flow meter, but they are all basically the same.  The measurement technique for an impact meter is fairly simple, product flow is dropped down a chute and directed to impact plate at a specific angle and flow rate. The impact creates an imp...

There are many different ways to move solid materials through a process, ranging from belt conveyors, vibratory conveyors, and pneumatic systems, to bucket conveyors/elevators and screw conveyors.  Many of these devices are great for moving the product, but if you need to measure the mass flow rate or control the flow rate, pulsations created by some of these devices can cause major problems. Devices like bucket conveyors/elevators, rotary valves, and screw conveyors have pockets, flights, or buckets that help to collect the product and move it through the device.  These create pulses or slugs of flow, some of which can be very large and there can be seconds or even moments where there is no flow at all between slugs. Pulsating Flow through a CentriFlow Meter Most mass flow meters require that pulsations be mechanically smoothed if at all possible, because they cannot deal with the pulsations when measuring the flow and computing the totalization.  This is typ...