To monitor the loading of tanks and silos a variety of load cells are available. A number of these has the disadvantage of only detecting whether the material inside the container is located above or below the sensor line. Other systems are indeed able to measure fill levels, the limitation however, is the surface of the material in the silo or tank. This surface depends on the product and is not necessarily representative of the true volume. Bulk loading and unloading for example, leaves a slope which may be asymmetrical. Typically bulk material will also vary in density when it enters the silo to the subsequent compacting as it settles. Fluids measuring, on the other hand, is effected by the formation of foam and/or the viscosity of the fluid against the container.
There is a solution to this. By combining a special mounting kit with a specific load cell, it is possible to directly determined the content load of a silo or tank at the base of the container stilts. The interesting thing here is, that the mass – and not the volume – inside the container is determined. This effectively means that any changes in bulk density, foaming, loading and/or unloading slopes has no impact on the result. The combination kit is flat, easy to install, completely weatherproof and none the less has an accurate of ≤ 0.1%. The system lends itself for weights up to and including 1 to 80 tons. The pricing is competitive to competitive volume measurement systems.
