Sight Flow Indicators- Finding out What’s Happening Inside a Pipe

Sometimes it is very necessary for the engineers and process supervisors to see what is happening inside a pipe. The process observation equipment can be broadly classified into two categories- sight glasses, which are used in process vessels and sight flow indicators which are used in process pipelines.

The purpose of the sight flow indicators is to allow the engineers to monitor the flow and condition of liquids, gases or granular solids in a system. The sight flow indicator is installed in a pipeline and it provides a visual means of verifying liquid flow for direction and approximate rate. It is a simple method of observing the liquid flow as slight flow indicators are inserted directly into the pipeline of a system. It is an extremely cheap system as well and also allows the engineers to observe the clarity and color of the process fluids through a window. The sight flow indicators are designed in such a way that they perform effectively at almost any flow, temperature and pressure.

Sight flow indicators are different from sight glass windows as they have indicating mechanisms which the sight class windows do not possess. Sight flow indicators may have passive components that are set in motion by the flow in order to indicate flow direction or intensity. If the flow indicator has indication components, a certain level of flow is required to set them in motion. Flow indicators without indication components are used in such cases where observing the attributes of a process fluid are more important than verifying flow.

There are two types of sight flow indicators- cylindrical and rotary.

Cylindrical type sight flow indicators allow maximum visibility but due to strength considerations are limited in use.

Rotary sight flow indicators, also known as propeller sight flow indicators, are useful for flow in any direction. The propeller turns, indicating flow and direction. Rotary sight flow indicators are helpful when observations are being made from a distance.

Why Sight Flow Indicators Are Important?

Environmental safeguards and energy conservation are of huge interest to most progressive business. To guarantee the effectiveness and efficiency of compressed air systems, the dimension of flow is critical. While looking at the on the whole charges of a distinctive compressed air system, the major costs are caused by the electrical power consumption however not by the maintenance or investment of the system.

There is another significant concern: The industry accounts for almost 40% of the whole CO2 emission. The CO2 emission comes from the burning of fossil fuel (gas, oil, coal) for producing electric power. Like, it is known that CO2 is accountable for the global warming. With time, when energy is a limited resource and ecological protection is a matter for everyone, flow measurement helps in analyzing the systems in terms of leak detection and consumption and enables in reducing the energy consumption and charge.

Instrumentation fabricators have developed a variety of flow measurement systems. Not every of them are same appropriate for the function in compressed air. Ones is making use of the thermal mass flow principle, that computes the standard volumetric flow which is independent of temperature and pressure over an extensive measuring range. For most of the commercial applications in gas; thermal mass flow is the apt choice since it provides the best value to performance proportion. The installation of the flow meters could be done quickly and easily. A special benefit is the removable computing machine. Sight Flow Indicators could be demounted easily and quickly for calibration purposes devoid of removing the whole measuring section. Owing to the compact design of flow sensor it is probable to observe and supervise all the compressed air systems from the compressor to the minimum compressed air tool in terms of the flow rate and the consumption power.