Flowmeter looks to the future

The innovation of flowmeters from mechanical flowmeters to electronic technology flowmeters is one of the most important development trends of flowmeters. Target flowmeters, electromagnetic flowmeters, ultrasonic flowmeters, vortex flowmeters and V-cone flowmeters (orifice flowmeters) use electrical principles to work, thereby avoiding the need to replace the moving parts of mechanical flowmeters. At the same time, the self-diagnosis function is introduced into the flow meter, making the flow meter not only a simple measurement tool, but more for the purpose of system maintenance, such as: empty pipeline detection and self-inspection. Moreover, after combining advanced communication technology in the electronic flow meter, the controller can obtain the flow data and historical data of the production site remotely and in real time.
According to the research of Frost&Sullivan, about 89.0% of the current flow meters in the world use the mAHART communication protocol, because the flow meter using the mAHART communication protocol is lower in installation difficulty and operating requirements than the flowmeter using the fieldbus protocol, and the introduction of the fieldbus system is also a small cost for users. However, as industry users continue to improve the level of automation, they want to obtain more information than traffic data from traffic measurement, such as diagnostic information and status detection, which need to rely on fieldbus support. Moreover, manufacturers such as Siemens and Elmo are focusing on the flow measurement technology of the fieldbus protocol. It is believed that this will certainly promote the application prospects of fieldbus protocol flowmeters in various industries.