Dear Valued Customer,

Experience our passion for flow with News-Trak. In this issue, we kick off a four part core technology white paper series with a white paper detailing our two types of thermal mass flow technologies—Capillary Thermal & Immersible Thermal.   Find it in the Core Technology Focus section below.  I think you will find this white paper very interesting.

In future editions of News-Trak, our core technology white paper series will focus on our Multivariable Mass Vortex, Transit-Time Ultrasonic, and Primary Standard Gas Flow Calibration technologies.  In addition, our featured story highlights Sierra’s 25 year history of working with NASA to solve flow challenges. We have also created an interesting slideshow—a sampling of recent application pictures sent from customers around the globe.  We also highlight our latest ultrasonic flow meter innovation and opened the doors to the "School of Flow” where we discuss common flow questions customers ask us every day.

We hope you find Sierra’s News-Trak informative and useful.

Sincerely,


Matthew J. Olin
President

A nominee for the 2008 Flow Control Innovation Awards, the Model 206 is literally an order-of-magnitude improvement in transit-time ultrasonic flow measurement. Sierra’s proprietary PicoFly™ technology is an industry first. PicoFly™ allows ultrasonic transit time-of-flight to be measured in picoseconds 10 -12 (one trillionth of a second) rather than the typical nanoseconds 10 -9 (one billionth of a second). The result is excellent resolution that enables extreme low flow detection.

Learn more...

Why Mass Flow?

In most processes it is mass, not volume, which is the critical variable. Volumetric flow measurements are less reliable than mass flow measurements, particularly for gases, because changes in gas temperature and pressure will change the density of a fixed volume of gas. This introduces errors in the control process. Additional errors can be propagated by back-pressure changes. Unlike rotameters, turbine meters and other volumetric flow devices, thermal mass flow meters and controllers are relatively immune to changes in inlet temperature and pressure. Because these instruments directly measure molecular flow, they provide the most reliable, repeatable and accurate method for measuring and delivering material from a supply to a process at a desired rate.

Standardized or Normalized Conditions:

For gases, Sierra measures mass flow not volumetric flow. The best and most logical way to define mass flow units is Kg per time unit, however in the gas industry we often translate a volume to certain standard conditions. These standard conditions are not always the same and can if interpreted wrong create big errors.



We try hard to say “Can Do” to every gas, liquid and steam application our customer may have. We have created an easy way for our customer to do research on our various products. See our easy to use Product Selection Tools which provides a tutorial on our various flow technologies as well as visual selection charts.

View Product Selection Page