Are you looking for better insight into your processes? Or to prevent waste? Improve safety? Enhance product quality? A sight glass observation port can check all these boxes and more. However, there are boxes equally as important to check off to select the right sight-glass window for your tanks and process vessels.
The adage about a picture being worth a thousand words translates more pragmatically into worth measured in dollars in industries that requires or benefit from process observation and analysis. A ruined process or a wasted batch costs companies money and wastes time, while observation can help prevent such occurrences.
A sight glass observation port provides a view into the interior of the process vessel or tank. It supplies numerous benefits to monitor the vessel’s contents and processes, such as ensuring chemical reactions occur at the appropriate time, that liquid or fluid levels are maintained or that cleaning processes are conducted properly, as a few examples.
ATEX and UL Certifications.
Manufacturers must meet a variety of standards to ensure the safety of their employees and their communities. In such industries as chemical and petrochemical, for example, vapors and mists escape during the production, processing, transportation and storage of flammable substances and during the production of mineral oil and natural gas. In such potentially explosive environments, it is critical to use certified equipment that can safely operate in these hazardous conditions.
A variety of certification standards regulate equipment used in explosive environments. Two of the most common sets of standards are ATEX and UL.
Process engineers typically question, when specifying equipment to be used in both Europe and the United States, what the ATEX and UL equivalencies are. In other words, if I specify something for ATEX Zone 1 or Zone 28, what is the corresponding UL Class and Division? The reverse applies as well for those specifying a UL level of performance. While this is a complex and technically precise question, we’ll address some general guidelines here.
LJ Star Sight Flow Indicators for industrial applications are the most common flow indicators style that enables visual observation of process flow through a pair of sight glasses mounted on a carbon steel body.
They are commonly used in industries that require a tool to monitor the speed and quality of liquid, gaseous products, or raw materials such as Chemical, Pharmaceutical, Food and Beverage, Agriculture, Marine and Industrial. With LJ Star Incorporated, you can be assured of high-quality industry-proven products that guarantee long-lasting use at an affordable cost.
What is a Flanged Sight Flow indicator?
A sight flow indicator is a body with one or more viewing windows, usually with gaskets, and a way to mount the indicator to the pipeline, such as flanged, threaded, or sanitary clamp connection. Flanged industrial sight flow indicators are often used in industrial applications between the API valve and tanker piping, allowing the operator to see fuel flow to or from tank.
LJ Star offers a full line of sight flow indicators to fit any processing application.
What is a Sight Flow Indicator?
A sight flow indicator is a tool used in a variety of processing plants to safely inspect the process material. When installed in process pipelines, sight flow indicators allow visual observation of the direction and rate of flow of liquid, powder, or gas process media, as well as the media’s color and clarity, through one or more observation windows. They consist of a glass column or two opposing windows with a means to mount the device to a pipeline.
What is a Sight Flow Indicator Used For?
The sight flow indicator is used for visual inspection by a human operator in a processing plant. Process fluids must be regularly inspected for characteristics such as clarity, color and foam or to confirm that there is proper flow in the pipeline. Sight flow indicators are also used to visually confirm conditions reported by instrumentation and to provide a backup in case of instrument failure or a power outage.
Explosion-proof process lighting solutions for industrial applications allow illumination in hazardous facility areas. Also referred to as EX lights, explosion-proof lights are suitable for illuminating processes in hazardous locations where combustible gases or vapors may be present, such as a critical processing line, pipeline, or vessel.
Plant managers know that you can’t control what you can’t see. That’s why sight glasses are installed throughout a system so that you can view what’s going on inside… but that isn’t enough. Without proper lighting, the interiors of your processing lines, vessels, and pipelines are often too dark for your operators to view critical process stages through a sight glass. Flashlights or other portable lights simply cannot provide sufficient lighting, and will often cause a glare to appear on the surface of the sight glass, making your visual inspections very difficult.
LJ Star’s weld-on and magnetic level gauges provide safe and accurate sight indication of fluid levels in a tank, process vessel or boiler.
What is a Liquid Level Gauge?
Liquid level gauges are industrial meters that are used to determine the level of a liquid in a process tank. Liquid level gauge calibration is used to ensure proper readings are obtained when using level gauges.
How Does a Magnetic Liquid Level Gauge Work?
Magnetic level gauges use magnetism to link the indicator in a gauge to a float inside of a vessel in order to accurately show the level of fluid within. As the position of the float changes, the indicator moves up or down by the same amount, meaning that the level in the measuring chamber will always be the same as the fluid level in the vessel itself.
In process industries ranging from industrial, chemical, food/beverage or pharmaceuticals, it’s essential that products are processed in the safest environment possible in order to
comply with a wide variety of regulations. Lighting plays a critical role to safety, of course. In order to see critical processes inside your tanks and vessels, you need the most reliable lighting available. And reliability certainly begins with availability – if you can’t find new halogen bulbs to replace your existing halogens, it’s lights out for your process.