BM 100 on Limestone and Cement

In the cement plant Ciments Lafarge, France two BM 100 gauges are measuring limestone and cement. The one for limestone was installed a couple of years ago, and is located near an ultrasonic level instrument.

Applications conditions are :
tank height = 4 m,
dusty atmosphere during tank filling.

During filling the ultrasonic instrument loses the signal and that was not acceptable for the customer, who wanted to follow the level in the tank without waiting until the dust has settled. As it can be seen in the picture, the US is fitted with an adjusting handle to allow the US wave to run parallel to the surface of the product. As the product characteristics are not stable, the position had to be readjusted every day.

With the BM 100 there is now no need to climb on to the tank, and the customer decided to keep the BM 100 and tried it successfully on a 14 metres cement tank.

In the cement tank the probe is totally coated with cement, but the error due to this coating is only few mm. For bulk storage a high accuracy is not necessary.

With cement and limestone the direct mode function is used and not the TBF mode. For powder applications such as this the accuracy in the direct mode is ± 10 mm, which is more than sufficient for this market.

Key Words: Level, TDR, limestone, cement, dust, powder
AP0035