Functional principal of the Turbine Flow Meter
The Turbine flow meter (axial turbine) was invented by Reinhard Woltman and is an accurate and reliable flow meter for liquids and gases. It consists of a slightly magnetic multi bladed free spinning rotor (impeller) mounted inside at right angles to the flow. The rotor is suspended in the flow by 2 end supports which act to straighten the flow prior to reaching the turbine. As the flow reaches the turbine, the turbine begins to spin due to the applied force by the flow. As such the rotation of the rotor is proportional to the rate of flow.
A pick-up sensor is mounted above the rotor. We supply our standard Turbine flow meters with either an inductance type pick-up sensor or a Hall-effect sensor. The difference is that the Inductance type sensor generates a voltage pulse each time a rotor blade passes by. Depending on the type of signal receiving instrument a pre-amplifier may be needed. The Hall-effect sensor provides a square wave output each time a blade passes by and has a built in pre-amplifier. The Hall-effect sensor also produces less magnetic drag on the rotor and is more suitable for lower flow rates.
The pick-up sensor produces pulses as soon as the rotor blades pass by, this provides an extremely fast reaction time making this type of flow meter highly suitable for batching applications.
All Turbine Flow Meters come with very small variations from the manufacturing process. As such, they all need to be calibrated individually. The pulses generated by the pick-up sensor represents pulses per unit volume, also referred to as the k-factor. All of our Flow Meters are supplied with individual calibration certificates and k-factor.
Our standard Turbine flow meters have a stainless steel body and rotor-end supports as well as rotor. The bearings are of Stellite and/or Aluminium Trioxide. Though, our Turbine flow meters are available in other materials on request. The Stellite bearings provide an unmatched extended life time. The standard finish for our Turbine flow Meters is fine turned and fine casted surfaces, but as of recently, we can also supply our flow meters with a certified surface roughness down to Ra = 0,1um.