Applications Of Wireless Industrial Pressure Sensors
This article looks at the applications of wireless industrial pressure sensors, which are often used for process control and for monitoring the condition of equipments even in remote locations. There are countless uses for pressure transducers in the industrial environment, such as monitoring pressure in machinery, the measurement of flow, leak testing, and determining the bottomhole pressure in the oil industry. The fact that they are wireless is important because of several advantages, including multi-point sensing, enhanced signal-to-noise ratio, less wiring, miniaturization of the transducers, ease of networking, and circuit integration. The reference pressure for wireless industrial pressure sensors could be absolute, gauge, sealed, or differential.
How do pressure sensors work? Let us first take a look at the principle behind pressure transducers or sensors. Oftentimes modern pressure transducers are based on piezoresistance where the resistance of the material will vary depending on the amount of pressure that is applied to the material. Thus, the pressure can be detected by measuring the current that is flowing through the material. For standard pressure sensors, this current is made to flow through wires that are linked to a control panel. However, for wireless pressure sensors, the transducers are provided with batteries and are capable of producing radio signals that are transmitted to the control panel.
Wireless industrial pressure sensors often find applications in the process markets, such as the petroleum industry, wastewater treatment, paper and pulp industries, metal industries, chemical industries, and food and beverage industries. Industrial devices, such as the Keller pressure sensors, need to be both dependable and hardy because the industrial environment can be hazardous and the failure of equipment will result in delays and the loss of money. It is often the case that accuracy in the measurements of the pressure is essential for various industrial processes because the quality of the resulting products could be severely compromised if the pressure and other factors are not maintained at certain levels.
Just like other electronic pressure transducers, the wireless industrial pressure sensors utilize a force collector to measure pressure. The pressure sensing component could be piezoresistive, electromagnetic, capacitive, optical, piezoelectric, or potentiometric. Meanwhile, there are other kinds of pressure transducers that do not measure the pressure directly. These devices deduce the pressure by observing resonant frequency changes in a sensing component, detecting the adjustments in the thermal conductivity of a gas, or measuring the flow of ions. Oftentimes, because an industrial system requires several sensors for pressure, sound, temperature, motion, or vibration, these sensors are interconnected to a computer system through a wireless sensor network. How do industries apply wireless sensor networks? Examples include the monitoring of various parameters in water/wastewater industries, the monitoring of different variables in the factory floor, and the monitoring of various process variables in oil production. Actually, the possibilities for utilizing these networks of pressure sensors are limitless but they tend to be focused in industries where there is a flow of materials, such as in the food industry, beverage industry, metal industries, chemical industries, and the paper industries.
