Mechanical Flow Meters -- Tell me your story (good/bad) 1

[rms148]

I'm interested in bringing in a mechanical flow meter to my plant, but no one here knows much about them. I don't have a particular one in mind, but it seems like a good solution to the problem of low budget / low accuracy flow totalizers. I've got 25% caustic solution in a sulfuric acid storage area. Looking for local readout with no electrical hookups.

I'd like to hear anyone's story on how well they work. I'm very intersted in learning about durability and service life. thanks a lot.

 

[SteamJetPE]

The only mechanical meters that ever worked in our plant were LCI mechanical meters (M-5's and M-7's). Our Neptune's never held up well. We used the LCI's with batch totalizers to charge raw materials (organics, oils, formaldehyde, etc). We even charged molten wax with them. They were good as long as you took care of them, didn't try to blow air or nitrogen through them, and calibrated them every month or so. We could get +/- .5% accuracy with 1% repeatability variation with them. They did leak, however. I would think you wouldn't want to have caustic solution dripping in an acid storage area. Also, the bearings and lobes of these meters don't like gritty solids like salt. We managed to keep the formaldehyde meters running by cleaning them regularly. SteamJetPE
Ejectors, LRVPs, Hybrids
Troubleshooting, startup, design