Measurement Instrumentation & Analyzer Solutions

Apart from multifunction capability and high accuracy, Coriolis meters are highly desirable for their very low maintenance requirements and advanced diagnostic capabilities. Accordingly, Coriolis meters are more and more taking the place of mechanical (PD/Gear type) meters in industry. Up until now, Coriolis meters have been limited in pressure rating because of the use of thin wall thickness tubes in limited wetted materials in their measurement circuits. Omega tube technology from Rheonik resolves this issue other manufacturers have failed to find a solutions for. The Omega frame mechanism in Rheonik Coriolis meters is ideally suited for thick wall tubes in a wide variety of wetted materials. Utilizing SuperDuplex steel tubes, Rheonik is able to offer maximum working pressure ratings of up to 20,000psi in meters up to 1” line sizes. With high resilience to vibration, pulsation and the many other challenges found in high pressure pipe systems, Rheonik meters provide reliable, precision flow measurement in high pressures with minimum maintenance requirements. SFI has helped customers measure flow for high pressure hydrogen dispensing, offshore chemical injection and hydraulic piping, to name a few.

Oil in water detection is a critical measurement in many industries for product safety, environmental pollution monitoring or operating efficiency and loss prevention. Most oil in water measurement instruments are sample line devices (process fluid is directed to the instrument in a side or sample stream) and a variety of optical methods are employed – florescence and turbidity being the most common.  Unfortunately, not all oils fluoresce and some oils have high dissolution in water, so no one technique can handle all measurements.  The Kemtrak FL007 probably comes the closest.  Using both fluorescence and turbidity methods simultaneously, the FL007 can measure a wide range of oils - from crude oil to vegetable oil – with the same instrument.  The FL007 has helped customers monitor heat exchanger failure in the food industry, overboard produced water in the oil and gas industry and discharge water permit levels in chemical and industrial complexes.

Foam is a huge problem in many industries and a huge industry has been created to manage it.  Control of foam to an acceptable level is usually achieved by the addition of surfactant type chemicals that act to lower the surface tension of the bubbles in foam, causing them to burst and drain back into the liquid below. These chemicals are expensive and overdosing is common (and often ineffective) where the creation of foam is operationally or aesthetically undesirable.  Past attempts to control foam have utilized traditional level measurement instrumentation with mixed results at best.  Foam is about 1% liquid (and 99% gas), so using a liquid level instrument is prone to many problems.  Foam can also have the tendency to coat everything – including level instruments.  This leads to false positives and measurement errors – very unsatisfactory all around.  The Hycontrol SmartFoam and SureSense instruments are designed specifically for foam detection and control.  They are available in multipoint and multi-vessel options and incorporate IMA sensing technology that ignores the effects of coating to prevent false indications and unreliable operation.  Standard and sanitary versions are available to cover a wide variety of applications in all industries.  SmartSense and SmartFoam probes help our customers reliably detect foam and save cost by adding only the right amount of chemical to control their foam issues.

Many fluids are turbid and many fluids are colored and it’s pretty easy to measure either one or the other.  But what if you’re trying to measure the color of a turbid solution?  Color is measured using the absorbance of light at a specific wavelength but the problem is that solids in the same stream will also absorb that same light, creating a color reading that is higher than the actual color.  The Kemtrak DCP007 dual beam photometer solves this problem by measuring at two specific wavelengths, one for the color of interest and one for the turbidity where the color has no impact on the absorbance value.  By subtracting one form the other, the DCP007 can provide a true color reading independent of the turbidity in the line.  Furthermore, additional settings in the photometer can fine tune this calculation to make it even more precise.  DCP007 Color and Concentration photometers help our customers measure the true color and concentration of a liquid in many different industries by providing critical feedback into supervisory control systems for improved product quality and enhanced performance of plant and machinery.

Mixed fluid streams can be a headache to control and maintain in a continuous production environment where they need to be carefully monitored for proportion.  They can be even more of a headache when trying to spot a polluting substance in a waste water discharge stream.  Using photometers to spot individual component(s) in a fluid stream is possible where the absorbance characteristics of those components is unique within that fluid, i.e. there are no other components of the stream that absorb light at the same wavelength.  It’s also possible where other substances that absorb at the wavelength of interest can also be measured at a wavelength where the component being measured does not absorb.  Subtract one absorbance from the other and voila! you have a measurement. But what if this isn’t possible?  South Fork Instruments can supply wet chemistry technology from Braun + Luebbe that is specific to an individual substance.  B+L analyzers extract a sample from the stream being measured and analyze it for the presence and quantity of the substance in question using pre-prepared reagents specific from the task, just like an analyses would be carried out in a laboratory. Whether spectral or through titration, B+L analyzers can be configured to measure one or more of hundreds of different substances.  Being able to mix and match analytical technology from quality instrumentation companies like Kemtrak and B+L allows us to provide a comprehensive, cost effective solution to our customers measurement needs that really works.

Pharmaceutical production is one of the most highly regulated industries in the world.  Here in the USA, every step of drug development, commercialization and production is carried out under the scrutiny of the FDA and every piece of equipment used in the process must be deemed acceptable.  UV sensors are mostly used in biotech separation processes where chromatography columns are used to separate protein products from solutions manufactured through fermentation and cell culture methods.  The UV detector is placed in the line and monitors absorbance of the fluid at [typically] 280nm as it exits the column.  Peaks in UV absorbance indicate the arrival of a separated protein product in the stream and this fraction is collected.  This process can happen many times throughout a single chromatography run.  Recent developments have been in the area of single use sensors for these processes as this methodology ensures no cross contamination from previous batches caused by incomplete cleaning and sterilization.  The Kemtrak DCP007-UV analyzer helps our customers in several ways: drift free operation allows for precise absorbance peak collection and gives maximum yield at the highest concentration possible, low energy UV light levels do not “irradiate” the protein product, zero hold up volume cells ensure sharp cut-on/cut-off points.  Kemtrak units are also ideal for use in development, through scale up and into production scale processing as they always give the same results and correlate exactly to offline measurements.