Chilled Water Systems Flow Monitoring with No Down Time

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Chilled water systems will often be providing cooling for critical processes such as pump protection, data centres, hospital scanners and pharmaceutical production.

Continuous operation of these systems is often required 24 hours a day, 365 days a year with little or no planned maintenance scheduled.

Reduce the risk of shut down by choosing the correct flow meter

The choice of a suitable flow meter to monitor the chilled water system can be as critical as the process itself. Adopting the incorrect flow metering technology can lead to flow meter failure. The failure of a flow meter may cause coolant to expel from the process further complicating the situation. Read here about the non-invasive clamp-on solution we offer.

A flow meter failure may also lead to a system shut down if no data is being received by a PLC integral to a safety system.

It may also be the case that a system has recently developed a fault and there is no flow monitoring at all on the cooling system. In this scenario a traditional in-line flow meter would require planned maintenance time to allow for installation as well as allowing the cooling system to be drained down and potentially replaced. When fault finding this is not an option.

A non-invasive clamp-on solution

Non-invasive clamp on flow meters provides an instant solution for quick, easy flow measurement on many chilled water systems. Clamp on flow meters are configured with the parameters of the pipe work as well as the cooling fluid typically water or a water-glycol mixture. Once configured the sensors can be placed on the outside of the cooling line pipe work to provide quick, repeatable and accurate flow measurement with the continual operation of the process.

Dynasonics TFX 5000 clamp on flow meters are the latest generation of transit time flow meters. Benefits include reduced installation cost and time, no pressure loss to your process and no moving parts to maintain or replace.

Standard 4 – 20 mA output signals provide instantaneous flow readings with switched outputs offering low and high flow alarms whilst also being configurable for more meter or process parameters.

Digital protocols offered also include Modbus (RTU or TCP Ethernet), BACnet (MS/TP field selectable or IP Ethernet) or EtherNet/IP to connect with many PLCs or BMS.