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Gas Mass Flowmeter also offers Profibus Interface

A Flotech Solutions product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Jun 27, 2000

The Brooks Instrument thermal mass flow controller from Flotech Solutions now has a Profibus-DP RS 485 interface, working at up to 12 Mbits/sec, in addition to the standard 4-20mA output.

The Brooks Instrument thermal mass flow controller from Flotech Solutions is now used in over 200,000 installations - from pilot plants to full-scale process control.

Whilst the first significant application was for control of doping gas flows in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, in 1/8" to 1/2" lines, meters are now even available with 200mm/8" flanges, for measuring flows up to 2000 M3n/hr.

The Smart technology used to provide accurate flow measurement and PID control has been developed to provide other useful customer interface features.

In parallel to acting as a meter or controller, the digital communications available provides information transfer, like flow rate, flow total, valve position and self-diagnostics - these include monitoring the power supply voltage, the gas temperature in the line, and out-of-range values of flow or valve position.

Digital command inputs give the ability to change or adjust the control settings over the whole 50:1 range available, modify the PID control algorithm, select the calibration curve being used for the meter, or adjust the alarm levels.

Brooks Mass Flow meters and controllers are available with HART communications, and RS232 or 485 interfaces up to 38kBaud, suitable for interfacing to Windows based applications like Excel and LabView, via a Brooks Smart DDE software programme.

Also available is a Profibus-DP RS 485 interface, working at up to 12 Mbits/sec, which is in addition to the 4-20mA standard analogue output.

All plants using gas handling or injection systems need safe handling procedures - particularly on start-up and shutdown.

The Brooks 5850S Smart units have a selectable soft start, to slowly ramp up the initial gas flow.

Abrupt injection of gas and initial pressure surge induced problems are therefore avoided.

For Emergency Shutdown or system purge requirements, the controllers have a separate hard-wired valve command input, which is customer selectable to either open or close the valve.

This signal over-rides all other digital communications inputs, to provide the necessary plant safety system feature.

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