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MagiKal - Automatic Gas Sensor Calibration (AGSC) System Software
MagiKal is our flagship Automatic Gas Sensor Calibration (AGSC) system that uses a PC, running MagiKal software along with our standard Millennia-DX monitoring and control package. Schedule years ahead to calibrate your gas sensors monthly, weekly or even daily, all without any effort by management and technical personnel. And, if there is an alarm or other event when a quick cal-check is needed, just push the Cal-Now button, and hundreds of sensors can be precisely re-calibrated in minutes at a cost of about 20 cents apiece. The cost of tedious and often risky manual calibration can be orders of magnitude higher.
Your gas sensor zones are monitored and managed via the central PC. The Magikal utility orchestrates the zonal calibration on schedule, managing the cal-gas application procedure and recording the before/after cal data for each gas sensor. The Millennia-DX monitoring and control PC constantly monitors each sensor and telemeters the MagiKal commands wherever needed throughout the site. Alarms are disabled during the procedure to avoid nuisance alarms. Large, yet economical, precision cal-gas tanks can last for years between refills. The computer even monitors tank pressure and forecasts replacement.
Low supply cost and minimum maintenance effort are compelling issues in the minds of our clients, but at no sacrifice for safety. Indeed, this computer utility far exceeds a human`s ability to perform such intricate work without error. Clients have better things to do with their time, money and staff. Distribution of cal-gas to each sensor is a science in itself. Rel-Tek has developed special pneumatic fittings and flow regulators to assure optimal sensor feed, conservation of cal-gas and minimum downtime.
A remote methane drainage site in Alabama needed 1% methane and oxygen sensor accuracy for a year or more, unattended. The solution was to install Rel-Tek gas sensors along with a MagiKal system which provides daily sensor calibrations using NBS certified 1% cal-gas. Calibrating the sensors at 6:00 AM every morning transfers the high cal-gas accuracy to the sensors. Like setting your watch to the National Observatory, you have precise time throughout the day. The next morning--BAM --the sensors are recalibrated before significant drift can occur. Drift of normal industrial instruments can be 2-5% per month, depending on conditions. However, by calibrating frequently with precision cal-gas, even industrial grade sensors can be made very accurate. Cal-Gas is cheap; so calibrate early and calibrate often... as the old voting adage might suggest.
The automatic calibration procedure is invisible to the connected monitoring equipment. During the few minutes of calibration the sensors are temporarily isolated. The signal levels immediately before calibration are transmitted throughout the AGSC procedure, thus masking the wide sensor excursions covering the monitoring discontinuity. The resulting high-precision cal-parameters (for zero and upscale gas levels) are applied by the computer immediately on completion.
Sensor signals tend to shrink with age, Sooner or later, the low or high signal won`t stretch to a full 4-20ma output. Not important with MagiKal. By employing high resolution digitizing, both MagiKal and MagiKal II can accept a small dynamic range and blow this up to provide an acceptable 4-20ma signal. Indeed, MagiKal provides an extra adjustment bonus-- after the sensor would normally be replaced. In other words, thanks to Magikal, an aging sensor can still produce a usable output, extending it`s life well beyond normal retirement. Considering the high cost of sensors, this $ savings by Magikal can be awesome.
MagiKal calibration events are logged to hard disk memory. The figure illustrates the Automatic Report Generator depicting sensor calibration dates and associated aging. Note the increase in the zero level and the decrease in the span level for each successive monthly calibration. Management is alerted as the range bar color changes from green to purple to red as a sensor approaches the minimum dynamic range or drifts off scale. Mechanical adjustments of the sensor`s zero/span pots can usually return the sensor to a suitable mid-scale range, good for many more calibrations. After sensor replacement or manual adjustment, simply click on the Cal-Now command and, in a few minutes, verify that all sensors responded properly to a full calibration cycle.
