CORIMASS E in the Pharmaceutical Wash Cycle

(CORIMASS has now been replaced by the more advanced OPTIMASS)
Customer: A Pennsylvania injection-packaging manufacturer

Measuring task:flow control

Product: 30% solution of hydrogen peroxide

Instrument: CORIMASS 0.3 E with 081K electronics

Process:
Hydrogen peroxide(H2O2) flows into the wash cycle for rubber stoppers. Once the wash is complete, the meter verifies that no additional solution is flowing into the process. If flow is detected, the system should shut down. 



However, sometimes in the process the valves would be tightly shut and the meter would still show flow. The process would shut down, the re-setting wasted time and money. The company contacted several suppliers of various technologies, among them thermal mass flow meters and turbine flow meters. They were discouraged by the apparent lack of options for their accuracy and configuration requirements.
  
Then the customer contacted KROHNE. The problem was that the hydrogen peroxide was "out-gassing", which caused a change of the material's density. The meter was mistakenly reading the changing density as flow.

The solution: the signal converter was re-programmed to turn the output "off" when the density reading was below a determined point. This prevented the meter from showing flow during the out-gas phase. Once the fluid would actually start to flow, the density would return to normal and the output would then be activated.
  
Key Words: Flow, Coriolis, pharmaceutical industry, hydrogene peroxide, exkalation,
AP0014