If you do not know why your variable area flowmeter has the float of a certain material and shape and no other different, for sure that this article will be of interest for you.
Many times we are not aware of all the components we manufacture until we try to explain some aspects of the performance of our flowmeters and level measuring instruments.
That happened to me when I wrote the post about the variable area flowmeters, what they are and how they work. As I wished to take lots of photos so that everything I was going to explain was graphically shaped, I checked the large number of floats we made, not only in terms of materials but also in terms of shapes. So, I thought that talking about the floats for variable area flowmeters could surely be interesting for you. Let’s go there!
“Many times we are not aware of all the components we manufacture until we try to explain some aspects of the performance of our flow and level measuring instruments”
As a brief summary of what we have already explained in the previous post:
Variable area flowmeters are simple but effective flowmeters for the measurement of gas and liquid flow rates and the name of “Variable Area” comes from their working principle.
- They consist of a float inside a graduated conical tube in vertical position. The fluid flows up through the tapered tube forcing the float to a position with sufficient free area to enable the flow to pass. This free area is related to the flow rate, the weight of the float and the density and viscosity of the fluid.
- Each position of the float corresponds to a flow rate indicated on the scale directly printed on the measuring tube, although this, as you could have read in the previous article about this type of flowmeters, is not exactly in this way in those models that are metal tube type. Better take a look before continuing if you do not have it clear: What is and how does a variable area flowmeter work?
Manufacturing materials
Floats are manufactured in different materials mainly for two reasons:
Here are some photos that illustrate the variety of materials in which floats can be made for variable area flowmeters or rotameters:
Stainless Steel floats
Aluminium floats
PVDF floats (left) and PTFE (right)
PVC floats
(From left to right) Ceramic floats, HDPE plastic and glass
(Front) Stainless steel floats
Floats types
In Tecfluid we manufacture very different types of floats depending on their use, either in flowmeters with glass or plastic measuring tube, or in flowmeters with metal measuring tube (always talking about variable area flowmeters):
Do you find this interesting? So, do not forget then to read the second part of the article Float types for variable area flowmeters (II).
Do not miss it!