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Flowmeter Types And How They Are Used

By: Adrian Fletcher

Flowmeters are used in many ways but their basic aim is to measure the flow of a particular substance passing through a tube, pipe or chamber. Why would you want to do this ?

Well, the main reason is to give you information about how a machine is operating or whether it is running efficiently. This goes for the human body or a large machine you might find in a factory. this article will cover the basic flowmeter types and explain what they are used for.

Peak flow meters are used to determine the flow rate of air running through the meter. These types of flowmeter are often used to work out how fit a person is. They tell the person what sort of lung capacity they have. With this information a fitness consultant can set an exercise program that is suitable.

However, you will find a peak flow meter more often used for people with asthma. This meter is used to diagnose the condition and then used by the person that suffers from asthma to monitor and manage it.

A peak flowmeter is designed to work like many types of flowmeter. It uses a displacement method to determine the flow rate. The displacement method is simply a movable float inside the tube. When air is blown in the tube the float is displaced. The amount that it moves is an indication of the air flow rate.

In industry there are many applications for flowmeters. For instance, water management is an obvious use. A meter may also be used to test various components of an HVAC system, in the factory or once installed. A flowmeter is also used in many factories, particularly food processing plants that require accurate measures of substances to come together to make the perfect recipe.

To illustrate this point more clearly, food processing is largely automated. Machines process numerous ingredients to come up with a favorite spread, cereal or snack. It is imperative that the exact amounts of all these ingredients is right and to the recipe or the foods will taste bad or could even be harmful. A flow meter can give a human operator this information. It can also tell the operator if the machine is working correctly.

In these industries you will find all types of flowmeters. I will list a few of them here and how they work. The most popular types are the ultrasonic and thermal dispersion flowmeters. They can measure the flow rates of liquids, gases and liquids with stuff in it.

The principal behind the ultrasonic flowmeter is that the change in the frequency of an ultrasonic wave can be used to correlate the flow rate of the particular substance that has caused this change.

This is the same principal behind the Doppler shift flowmeter, that is commonly used to measure liquids that contain particulate matter, like effluent, waste water or reclaimed water.

Thermal dispersion works in a similar way, except it uses heat to make this correlation. A fixed point is heated to a set temperature. As the gas or liquid being measure passes this point the heat is dispersed. The rate at which the heat is dispersed is equivalent to the flow rate of the substance passing it.

There are other types of flowmeter used in industry. These include the turbine, wheel and magnetic flowmeters. they determine the flow rates of various hydraulic machinery and can warn if there is a problem with the machine.

Article Source: Main Articles

Get details on the magnetic flow meter and information about how they are used at www.flowmetermatters.com.

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