Inserting A Magnetic Flow Meter Into A Control Valve

Mark Gimson, Business Development and Marketing Manager for Singer Valve, introduces Singer Valve’s new SPIMV which combines a magnetic flow meter with a control valve to provide operators and engineers with a myriad of new flow measurement and control options.

The following is an excerpt from a Q&A with Water Online Radio. Click on the Radio Player above to hear the full interview.

Water Online Radio: What are you launching here at ACE?

Mark: We're launching what we're calling the SPIMV, which is a magnetic flow meter that inserts right into a control valve. Control valves and flow meters are two very common items in our water systems, and frequently, a utility will use a flow signal primarily to control a valve, and it'll be a separate entity-type valve.

They will use the signal from the flow meter to flow pace or to shut off a control valve. That typically took two pieces of equipment and a lot of individual programming. We now are able to do that all in one valve, so we have a complete control valve solution featuring the magnetic flow meter inserted right into the control valve. That can be added to any of our pilot systems.

Water Online Radio: Is this a breakthrough in valve design?

Mark: There are other companies out there that have put flow meters into control valves, but they have never been magnetic flow meters, which are really the de facto standard, if you like, in the water industry. This is really a first in that regard, and the beauty of using a magnetic flow meter is it really gives us an extremely accurate flow meter, unlike some of the alternate technologies out there. This is very, very accurate.

It gives us two percent accuracy of reading not at full scale, so it allows us to have a control valve that we can either flow pace from that flow measuring signal, or conversely, it allows an end user to have a control valve that also allows them to get a rate of flow or a totalized flow, maybe water feeding into a tank or something like that. It certainly brings a lot of scope to the flow metering world for sure.

Water Online Radio: What would be a good application for this meter?

Mark: A great example would be a typical pump station might have one flow meter on the outlet, on the combined header of the outlet of a pump station. This now allows you to put a very inexpensive, simple flow meter on every one of the pumps in there. It really gives them real direct feedback as to the behavior of each of their pumps.

This gives you the option if you want to do pressure management in a system and you want a reducing valve, and you also want to have a flow signal so you know in a certain zone exactly how much water is going in at what pressure.

Maybe you're measuring flow going into a tank, a reservoir. This now gives you the option of having not only an altitude valve, but also a flow meter in the same valve. There's a myriad of different computations. It's really only limited by physics and your imagination.

Anywhere where a flow signal would be nice to have, and you don't have the space to put one in, or you don't have the capital expenditure to put it in, this is a much more cost effective option...

Click on the Radio Player above to hear the full interview.