“Polyphase” means “many phases,” describing a form of AC electrical system where…
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Perhaps the most valuable skill an instrument technician can possess is the ability to efficiently diagnose…
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Three-phase AC is the dominant mode of electric power generation and distribution in modern societies.…
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Imagine a major marathon race, where hundreds of runners gather in one place to compete. When the starting gun…
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Valves can experience a number of problems, most of them either preventable or repairable. These problems can…
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In the United States, the most common language used to program PLCs is Ladder Diagram (LD), also known as…
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Diagnostic ability is arguably the most difficult skill to develop within a student, and also the most…
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Hydrogen ion activity in aqueous (water-solvent) solutions is a very important parameter for a wide variety of…
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A technological advance introduced in the late 1980’s was HART, an acronym standing for Highway…
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The Law of Continuity for fluids states that the product of mass density (\(\rho\)), cross-sectional pipe area…
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RTDs are completely passive sensing elements, requiring the application of an externally-sourced electric…
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Human-machine interfaces, or HMIs, are a critical part of nearly all control systems, complementing the…
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Non-dispersive analysis, while newer in discovery than dispersive analysis (Isaac Newton’s 17th-century…
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The efficient identification and correction of instrument calibration errors is an important function for…
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The vast majority of PID controllers in service today are digital in nature. Microprocessors executing PID…
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An extremely important topic in engineering is that of transfer functions. Simply defined, a transfer function…
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Although it seems each model of PLC has its own idiosyncratic standard for programming, there does exist an…
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As we have seen, the concept of integration is finding the accumulation of one variable multiplied by another…
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Data-processing modules within FF systems are known as function blocks. Sometimes these blocks serve merely to…
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A chemical reaction resulting in a net release of energy is called exothermic. Conversely, a chemical reaction…
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The Law of Continuity for fluids states that the product of mass density (\(\rho\)), cross-sectional pipe area…
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A fluid is any substance having the ability to flow: to freely change shape and move under the influence of a…
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As previously defined, calibration refers to the checking and adjustment of an instrument so that its output…
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The key to understanding how three-phase electric motors work is to have an accurate mental picture of the…
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Layer 1 of the OSI Reference Model is where we define the “physical” elements of a digital data…
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Capacitive level instruments measure electrical capacitance of a conductive rod inserted vertically into a…
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A variety of problem-solving techniques have been presented for students over the years which are all helpful…
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A pressure switch is one detecting the presence of fluid pressure. Pressure switches often use diaphragms or…
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A special type flowmeter suited for powdered or granular solids is the weighfeeder. One of the most common…
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The advent of “smart” field instruments containing microprocessors has been a great advance for…
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The simplest form of 4-20 mA current loop is the type used to represent the output of a process controller,…
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Few areas of mathematics are as powerfully useful in describing and analyzing the physical world as calculus:…
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Circuit breakers used in residential, commercial, and light industrial service are self-tripping devices: they…
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When a high-energy photon strikes an atom, it may eject one of the lower-level electrons from its shell,…
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The efficient identification and correction of instrument calibration errors is an important function for…
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Binary patterns are not just able to represent numerical values. Given a standardized code, they may represent…
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Current is the name we give to the motion of electric charges from a point of high potential to a point of low…
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The electrical conductivity of liquids is an important analytical measurement in many industrial processes.…
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Electrical Resistance Resistance (\(R\)) is the dissipative opposition to an electric current, analogous to…
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Sample sizes of chemical substances are often measured in moles. One mole of a substance is defined as a…
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The final element of PID control is the “D” term, which stands for derivative. This is a calculus…
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Control valves are supposed to deliver reliable, repeatable control of process fluid flow rate over a wide…
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Binary patterns are not just able to represent numerical values. Given a standardized code, they may represent…
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Electrical power grids primarily consist of three-phase AC circuits. This means most power lines (transmission…
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Some analyzers measure the composition of a process stream by directly immersing the sensing element in that…
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Up until this point, we have explored various types of instrumentation diagram, each one making reference to…
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A hand switch is exactly what the name implies: an electrical switch actuated by a person’s hand motion.…
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Imagine a liquid-level control system for a vessel, where the position of a level-sensing float sets the…
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Filled-bulb systems exploit the principle of fluid expansion to measure temperature. If a fluid is enclosed in…
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A simple control system drawn in block diagram form looks like this: Information from the measuring device…
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DC electric current signals may also be used to communicate process measurement information from transmitters…
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The following animation shows how the “rotating” magnetic field of a three-phase AC induction…
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A great many precision instruments use the principle of balance to measure some quantity. Perhaps the simplest…
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A powerful mathematical concept useful for analyzing practically any physical system – electrical…
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(Will be addressed in future versions of this book)
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Linearity of Measurement Instruments The purpose of calibration is to ensure the input and output of an…
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Lipták, Béla G. et al., Instrument Engineers’ Handbook – Process Measurement and Analysis Volume I,…
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A very simple device used to measure pressure is the manometer: a fluid-filled tube where an applied gas…
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Some self-powered (4-wire) analog electronic transmitters are designed to behave as electrical loads rather…
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