Posts Tagged vacuum transmitter
Tips for ranging a vacuum transmitter
Posted by danstips in 4-20mA, Honeywell, Pressure, Pressure Gauges, Pressure Transmitters, pressure transmitters, Siemens, Transmitters, WIKA on July 31, 2014
A process plant’s technician was mystified about how to get a typical gauge pressure transmitter to read in the vacuum range. “All our gauges are 0 to 30 inches mercury, and that’s what we need to transmitter output to be. But the transmitter you sent us just stays around 4mA when we pull a vacuum.”
We walked out to the reactor vessel to look at the installation. The transmitter’s Low side port was open, its high side port was plumbed into a tee along with a conventional bourdon tube pressure gauge reading gauge pressure vacuum.
I could see why he was confused. The mechanical gauge goes from 0 to 30. I asked what range he used to configure the pressure transmitter. His answer, “0 to 30 inches mercury, same as the mechanical gauge.”
So, what was happening?