In sub-sea applications used for mining oil and gas at the ocean floor, large and powerful hydraulic accumulators often get the job of providing emergency power on blow out preventers positioned on the sea floor.
If you’re a hydraulic accumulator manufacturer then you know that it’s all about pre-charge pressure. Accumulators are pressure vessels used to store hydraulic energy by compressing a blanked of nitrogen over an oil filled area. The accumulators are typically cylindrical type, with a stainless steel float that partially separates the oil from the nitrogen. They cylinders are piston type as membrane or gasket versions are too prone to leakage at high charges. The accumulator is designed to deliver hydraulic energy under controlled pressure to the connection pipes and hoses of the sledge assembly under emergency operating conditions. CPI Linear Position Sensors are ideally suited to this application in a way that perhaps no other sensor in the world can lay claim to. Key elements of our sensor design make our operation as a charge sensing element much more robust and completely insensitive to high pressure our sub-sea deployment.
The Undersea Economics of Hydraulic Accumulator charge sensing. Because of the criticality of hydraulic accumulators used to power blow out preventers, operators need to be sure pressure is maintained in the cylinder. To insure this, periodic maintenance is typically conducted every 6 months or more to check and potentially replace cylinders that have failed or leaked in any way. Imagine the potential cost savings if a reliable way of detecting and monitoring pre-charge pressure on the sea floor were available! Operators could save 10’s of thousands of dollars in expensive maintenance and replacement operations, deffering them until they were really needed. Until now this has been difficult to achieve because the sensors available were even less reliable than the cylinders once deployed in such a harsh environment. But with linear position charge sensors like the CPI 1500, the sensor is no longer the first point of failure. For more information, please contact CPI today or visit www.cpi-nj.com. This content was originally posted at https://www.cpi-nj.com/blog/hydraulic-accumulator-charge-sensing/ Once again CPI switches have made it into an application that we couldn’t have envisioned in a month of Sunday’s… This time our switch is lighting up the construction industry, both literally and figuratively, in an application that poses a creative solution to a real world problem.
As anyone who drives a car can tell you, highway and roadside construction crew’s often work at night, and all through the night. For years crews used traditional light towers to illuminate their work, causing an almost unnatural radiance that motorists could not fail to notice miles down the road. But while these fixed tower stations could illuminate large area’s they also can have a tendency to create washed out visibility, effectively blinding oncoming motorists leading some states to pass laws restricting their use in construction areas adjacent to active traffic. Minimum road setbacks are defined and angling of the fixed lights is critical to prevent these and other issues. Enter the light balloon: In this creative solution, diffused light is provided through, well… a balloon which typically emits 360 degrees of non-blinding light that is both safe for drivers and alerts them to oncoming roadwork. Because the light is not point sourced, it can be positioned directly on the shoulder of the road closer to the actual work site. And unlike light towers, some designs can actually be attached to construction vehicles to go where they go as work proceeds, keeping the light source where its needed without constant repositioning. In this technology, our client 8:12 Illumination uses a high temperature HID lamp is used that can emit almost 500,000 lumens and there is a fan that inflates the balloon and runs continuously to cool the bulbs. Care must be taken that any deflation of the balloon does not allow the balloon to come in contact with the active lamps or a fire could result. In this application our E1134 Switch was chosen to provide the safety shutoff in cases of sudden puncture or deflation to insure that the balloon never touches active lamps. If the bag deflates due to high winds, motor failure, or for any other reason, the bag falls on top of our switch thereby shutting off power to the bulbs. The CPI Limit Switch Solution for all Occasions The CPI E1134 Roller Lever Flush Mount Limit Switch is in fact ideal for this application. As shown, it has a straight lever actuator with a hard Nylon roller and the switching mechanism is completely sealed in neoprene. All parts are completely made of high grade stainless steel and the neoprene seal is both 100% waterproof and affords an operating temperature range up to 185F. This can be extended even further by using our santoprene sealed switch with an operating temperature up to 220F. For electromechanical safety applications, there is no more reliable or versatile limit switch product line in the world today than CPI’s E-series limit switch. Off the shelf configurations come in a wide variety of mounting and electrical specifications with many actuator types to choose from. And of our course our 60 years in limit switch design means that if you need custom, we have the deep engineering know how to do that. To discuss your application, contact a CPI representative today or visit http://www.cpi-nj.com This content was originally posted at https://www.cpi-nj.com/safety-limit-switch-balloon-light |
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