Brite Tank Level Monitoring

[dleong]

Hi Everyone,

I am looking into getting away from our traditional sight glass method to keep track of our daily volumes in our brite tanks. I wanted to get some input on how other breweries went about this. I have a few quotes on differential pressure transducers to monitor the tanks including a controller w/ display to do the calculations. The only problem I have with this is having to modify all our brite tanks to accept this transducers. These installation cost will drive up the cost of this project quickly, since we will have to get certified welds and pressure test all the tanks before they can be used again.

We currently have 9 brite tanks and it will also not be easy to find downtime where we can modify all tanks at one time when they are empty. Our brite tanks range from 55, 110, 236 and 296 BBL tanks.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Derek

[jebzter]

If you have sight tubes, why not put a tee in line at the bottom and put your differential pressure sensor there instead of modifying the tanks. Good to keep the sight glasses around anyways, electric things can always break and give bad readings.

[CPESystems]

You could also put the sensors on the outlet port before your shut off valve. However, you will get false readings when pumping out of the tanks.

Another possible choice would be putting the tanks on load cells. This would be about the same cost as the differential pressure sensors and would not require any tank modifications except to the legs.


For smaller tanks and horizontals you could use a Potentiometric Level Transmitter. These provide accurate reliable measurement in difficult environments utilizing potentiometric technology. Utilizing potentiometric technology excels in these traditionally difficult applications. Fast reacting, the sensor samples interior level at ten times per second allowing accurate readings while filling or dispensing product. These probes are only available up to 80" long though so after that you have to use the differential pressure sensors or load cells.

If you contact us if you want more information.

Don

[dleong]

If you have sight tubes, why not put a tee in line at the bottom and put your differential pressure sensor there instead of modifying the tanks. Good to keep the sight glasses around anyways, electric things can always break and give bad readings.

Jebzter, I wouldn't want to use the sight glass fittings since they aren't located at the bottom of the tanks. Since our tanks are so large, we put the sight glasses with a resolution of 1 BBL, while the lowest quantity we can see is 20 BBLs. So our sight glass fittings won't work for the pressure transducers.

You could also put the sensors on the outlet port before your shut off valve. However, you will get false readings when pumping out of the tanks.

Another possible choice would be putting the tanks on load cells. This would be about the same cost as the differential pressure sensors and would not require any tank modifications except to the legs.


For smaller tanks and horizontals you could use a Potentiometric Level Transmitter. These provide accurate reliable measurement in difficult environments utilizing potentiometric technology. Utilizing potentiometric technology excels in these traditionally difficult applications. Fast reacting, the sensor samples interior level at ten times per second allowing accurate readings while filling or dispensing product. These probes are only available up to 80" long though so after that you have to use the differential pressure sensors or load cells.

If you contact us if you want more information.

Don

CPE Systems, all of our tanks are horizontal since they are on the basement level and definitely wouldn't be easy to get load cells underneath the legs. I did think about putting the sensors on the outlet, but like you said it may give false readings when packaging out of the brite that way. I want to use this mostly for visual display on some sort of LCD screen or tv so we can monitor the brites at all times of the day. Thanks for your suggestions though.

[rdcpro]

[...] all of our tanks are horizontal since they are on the basement level and definitely wouldn't be easy to get load cells underneath the legs. [...]

How tall are the tanks? Since they're horizontal, you can try out a capacitive or potentiometric probe as Don suggested, and go through a top port, if one exists. IMO, this would work better than differential pressure anyway, as you measure level directly. Atmospheric tanks can be measured with a sensor at a single connection point, but a pressurized tank needs a D/P measurement, which is two connections, top and bottom. Also, changing temperature and density of the beer must be accounted for.

Don mentioned an 80" limit on probe length, but I'm reasonably certain I've seen longer ones. You may have to get clever to fit the probe to the tank, if there is little overhead clearance. Otherwise, you can go with a top mounted ultrasonic sensor. These can be confused by foam, though if you have foam in the bright, you may have other problems, I think. Reading level at or near zero might be tricky.

Regards,
Mike Sharp