Cool it Down! - Five industrial applications for cooling water flow measurement technology

When we talk of water meters and flow meters, the terms can be used interchangeably, but there is a significant distinction between the two. All water meters are flow meters, however, not all flow meters are water meters. Ubiquitous to the domestic environment as devices used to calculate consumers’ utility bills, water meters take measurements of the total amount of water passing through them. In contrast, flow meters measure the volume and flow rate of liquids or gases flowing through a pipeline. They can be used for other fluids and gases in a wide range of industrial applications, as well as water.

Measuring the flow rate of cooling water systems
Cooling water systems are used to reduce heat generated by an industrial process or air conditioning apparatus; they cool down vital processes used in locations such as power stations, food and beverage processing plants, data centres, hospitals and pharmaceutical production facilities.

According to Neil Hannay, one of Titan Enterprises’ Senior R&D Engineers: “Selecting an appropriate flow meter for a cooling water system is just as vital as the operational process itself.” Precise and efficient flow measurement data will help to optimise plant or system efficiency while saving energy, controlling chemical costs and increasing profit margins.

The five applications:

1) Refrigerants
Dependable flow monitors are critical for measuring refrigerant liquids; this is hugely important for cooling equipment used in data centres. Refrigerants in cooling systems are commonly found at big data centres, as well as electricity generation facilities, to ensure that equipment runs efficiently and avoid overheating.

The steel-reinforced polymer components, used to manufacture the low inertia turbines found on Titan Enterprise’s 900 and 1000 Series turbine flow sensors provide the perfect solution for measuring the low viscosity, volatile refrigerant fluids in their liquid state.

As water conducts heat approximately thirty times quicker than air, using water or a water mix as the cooling medium provides an extremely efficient liquid cooling system, which is crucial for electronic systems, medical devices and highly sensitive, precision instrumentation.

Cooling liquid water systems need reliable and accurate monitoring to ensure there is enough coolant flowing to the instrument or process downstream, thereby mitigating the grave consequences of overheating, including the degradation of operational performance, as well as damage to important equipment and costly shutdowns.

2) Cooling systems for chemotherapy
A highly sophisticated liquid-based cooling system from Paxman Coolers Ltd uses Titan’s NSF-approved mini-turbine flowmeters for monitoring the coolant’s flow rate all around the patented cooling cap during chemotherapy procedures. The scalp cooling technology can diminish the damage the treatment inflicts on hair follicles by lowering the scalp’s temperature throughout the treatment. The mini turbine flowmeter is ideal for this application because it provides users with a superb balance of precision, and long-term resistance to coolant fluids - and it is highly reliable. Titan’s mini-turbine device is also easy to maintain and highly cost-effective.

3) Glass bottle production
Graphoidal Developments are a renowned designer and manufacturer of highly advanced lubrication and coating systems for the glass container and tableware markets. Titan Enterprise’s Industrial Process Atrato® ultrasonic flowmeters are deployed in the water lines for monitoring the administration of the coolant to the shears that are used to cut semi-molten glass in the bottle-making process. The precise application of lubricants and coolants is a key factor in the reliability and efficiency of the whole machine. Along with the numerous flow ranges of this ultrasonic instrument, in older glass bottle-making facilities the build-up of rust

in water coolant lines need a rugged flowmeter that is not affected by ‘dirty water’. As this device has no moving parts, there are no parts that wear out or clog because of rust corrosion, or particles.

4) Laser coolant flow
There are a multitude of uses for industrial and medical lasers, these include cutting, welding, micro-machining, and eye surgery. Lasers bring about a considerable amount of heat that needs to be dissipated quickly and efficiently to facilitate the stable long-term performance of the instrument. Water circulated via a chiller or heat transfer system is a widely used method for cooling lasers. The 800 Series, from Titan Enterprises, are turbine flowmeters that are installed in many highly sophisticated industrial and medical laser systems to ensure that the lasers are consistently cooled down thanks to precise and repeatable measurements of water flow rate.

5) The most sensitive astronomical camera in the world
The largest optical telescope on the planet is the 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias on the Spanish island of La Palma, which has a very powerful astronomical camera, which was designed and developed by the University of Sheffield, in the UK. The camera, known as the HiPERCAM, is the Earth’s most sensitive astronomical camera and has been used to study active galactic nuclei, black holes, exoplanets, neutron stars, white dwarfs, as well as the outer reaches of the Solar System. HiPERCAM uses five light sensors, which are ultra-sensitive charge-coupled devices that need to be cooled to 183K/-90°C to minimise noise in the images. This is achieved by using high-performance thermo-electric (Peltier) coolers, which also need a water-glycol-based coolant mixture at +5°C to reduce the heat they extract. A flow meter that was completely unfettered by the inevitable microbubbles and metallic sludge in the telescope’s coolant supply was therefore essential. Titan Enterprise’s FT2 optical flow sensor, which utilises an LED and photo-diode to monitor flow, operated flawlessly without being impacted by the cooling fluid’s noxious properties.