Guided Wave Radar for Cement Real-Time Level Measurement - Construction & Construction Materials - Cement
Flexar Continuous Level Systems Successful on Cement Powder and Flyash at Batavia Concrete.
Explanation
Batavia Concrete is located in Montgomery, IL and is one of many concrete batch plants operated by Prairie Materials in northern Illinois. Like most concrete plants, Batavia uses cement and flyash as ingredients. Ready mixed concrete batch plants take the basic components needed to form concrete, i.e. sand, rock, cement powder and flyash and batch them together for loadout into concrete trucks. Concrete is used as a versatile construction material and there are literally tens of thousands of batch plants around North America.
Unfortunately, Batavia’s facility only used high and low level indicators. Their operations manager, Fred Thompson, had no idea how much material was remaining at any given time. This delayed replenishment and sometimes they couldn’t fit a truckload of cement or flyash into the bin. They needed to know the level of the material at any given time in order to become more efficient.
Solution
Chief application engineer for Monitor Technologies, Andy Bowman, decided to employ the Flexar technology and product to help Batavia Concrete. Monitor Technologies introduced the Flexar® guided wave radar continuous level measurement system to Batavia Concrete in December 2005. Monitor strategically acquired this level sensing system during 2005 to add to its significant solution capability for powder and bulk solids applications. Flexar is proven technology combined with five decades of bulk solids experience and unique inventory management software solutions. Monitor knew it had the right solution for Batavia Concrete.
Flexar is a guided wave radar continuous level sensor. Distance/level is measured by the time-of-flight of the reflection of a microwave signal (transmitted down the wave-guide, which is a heavy-duty 0.3” SS cable with 3.9 ton tensile strength) off the material surface. Cement and flyash both have relatively low dielectric constants and Flexar’s direct measuring mode was successful in providing real-time continuous updates of the material level during filling and draw-down.
Both Flexar units are installed with 34’ cable length. The 4-20mA signal from each Flexar unit is connected to a panel meter in the control room. Fred Thompson, Regional Operations Manager of Batavia Concrete, has been satisfied with this solution ever since it was installed. Observations during filling cycles were very good right off. Flexar didn’t skip a beat, even with the heavy dust kicked up during pneumatic filling.
Fred Thompson reports that he desires to install Flexar units at other plants within his regional area of responsibility. He prefers the true continuous nature of Flexar guided wave radar units.
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