Do you use sight glasses to control your food or drink manufacturing processes?

Sight glasses are a key feature in many food processing industries. They allow operators to see directly into the pipe when there is a change of product or a product/water interface so that they can perform actions, like switching a valve.

Whilst simple solutions have benefits, in food and drink production, using sight glasses can be costly, especially when material and energy costs are increasing:

• Reaction times = waste. As an example, if a process is pumping a
liquid at 10 m3/hour, it means 2.8 litres pass the sight glass every second. Therefore, a 10-second reaction time, which seems small at first, will result either in a loss of 28l or 28l of the wrong liquid going to the tank with the right product.

• Operator dependence = waste. Different people will often see the transition between two liquids at different points, and factors like different lighting at night vs daytime make judging the correct time to react
to a transition even more variable.
For example, to ‘stop pumping when water is visible in this liquid’ depends upon who is doing it, as the ability of the human eye to detect the mixing of one product with another varies greatly from person to person and product to product.

• Not being able to see it = waste. The human eye cannot see transitions like a 10 percent addition of water to cream, which a Satron VO optical sensor
can detect in real-time, and prevent product losses and quality issues.

Satron optical sensors precisely detect the amount of product at every moment of the day, providing a real-time, accurate “super eye” on the process and feeding it back to the automation systems. 

Satron’s VO sensors are hygiene certified and adapted to a broad range of applications. They are a key tool trusted by food and drink manufacturers to improve and standardise processes and reduce losses, with a very short
payback time.
Satron makes introducing their optical sensors into an existing manufacturing process easy with an adaptor kit to install it into an existing sight-glass. 

The adaptor kit helps achieve a payback time of only a few months, with an innovative sensor which is used by many leading global brands.

Product advantages
• Fast payback from reduced waste
• Simple installation – swap-out sight glasses
• Precision real-time measurement 24/7
• EHEDG Hygiene certified
• Trusted by leading food and drink manufacturers
• Robust stainless-steel units
• Low maintenance – no moving parts

Click here to download a brochure.