Our Australian distributor, Compressed Air Australia has a customer in the foundry business that produces large building components. Recently, they ran into a problem with their load cells overheating. Load cells are positioned underneath what is called the ladle car so that the contents of the ladle that rides on top can be weighed.
The contents of the ladle are obviously very hot and radiate heat in all directions. This can cause the compartments in the floor where the load cells are contained to become very hot as well. This caused errors in readings that were being produced by the load cells. It was determined that some form of cooling was going to be necessary. However, due to very tight configuration of the load cell compartments, choices were limited.
The customer had heard about vortex tubes, made an internet search and found EXAIR Vortex Tubes. With the guidance of our distributor, we were able to determine that a model HT3230 (High Temp. Vortex Tube) connected at each load cell compartment, purging the enclosed space, dropped the temperature from 200°C down to a much cooler 80°C that was requested by the customer.
The customer was able to address their over-heating problem adequately and the load cells are working properly.
Neal Raker, Application Engineer
nealraker@exair.com
