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A World of Signal Conditioning & Process Control Instrumentation Products |
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Industrial Temperature Primer
Article written by Tim Montgomery of Wilkerson Instrument Co., Inc.
IntroductionApproximately 16% of all process instrumentation measures, indicates, or controls temperature. According to a Frost and Sullivan survey, industrial temperature measurement is growing at a rate of 3.6% annually. This Temperature Primer is written with the intention of giving the reader a broad overview of the history of this important phase of measurement and the theory and hardware used in applications found in contemporary process control and measurement fields.Sir Humphrey Davy was a brilliant scientist who made many important discoveries in his rather short lifetime. Among his many discoveries and inventions were the use of nitrous oxide (laughing gas) as the first anesthetic, the discovery of the elements sodium, potassium and boron, electric arc welding, and the invention of the miner's safety lamp, an oil lamp with a flame encased in metal gauze allowing light and air to pass through but preventing the heat from the flame starting an explosion by conducting the heat away. The flame of the lamp changes color in the presence of explosive gas. This lamp is still in use today as a backup to more advanced forms of gas detection. In the year 1799, Sir Humphrey Davy (1778-1829) melted two pieces of ice by rubbing them together. This act proved for the first time that heat is a form of energy. Before this time, heat had been considered to be a weightless fluid called Caloric. This discovery allowed heat to be viewed in a completely different way and opened the way for advancement in temperature measurement technology which had been limited to simple thermometers before this time. We've come a long way since that day in 1799! Today, temperature is the most measured process variable in industry. In this article we will briefly review some of the aspects of the field of industrial temperature measurement and control.
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