INTRODUCTION

There are broadly two concepts of thermal flowmeter now available for gas mass flow measurement, one of which is also applicable to liquids. I shall follow the useful terminology in ISO committee draft (ISO/CD 14511:1998) for the two types. The first is the capillary thermal mass flowmeter (CTMF), which has broad applications in the control of low flows of clean gases, but which can also be used with a bypass containing a laminar element to allow higher flow rates to be measured. The arrangement of heaters and coils between the various manufacturers differs, but the basic approach is the same, with heat added to the flowing stream and a temperature imbalance being used to obtain the flow rate.

The second is the full-bore thermal mass flowmeter (ITMF), which is available as both insertion probe and in-line type. It has a widely used counterpart in the hot-wire anemometer for measurement of local flow velocity, but, as the need for a gas mass flowmeter has become evident, it has been developed as a robust insertion probe for industrial usage and then as the sensing element in a spool piece flowmeter. It has been produced by an increasing number of manufacturers in recent years as a solution to the need for such a mass flowmeter.

CAPILLARY THERMAL MASS FLOWMETER – GASES

In various examples of the CTMF, the gas flows through a very small diameter tube that has heating and temperature-measuring sensors.