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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 55, NO. 3, JUNE 2006
I. I NTRODUCTION
but they are comparatively costly and require various environmental and experimental precautions during the measurement.
The optical fiber liquid level transducer [5], [6] is a contact-type
transducer, which produces optical pulses when the liquid level
moves along the cladding and uncladding zones of the optical
fiber. This transducer has the further advantage that it can be
used with intrinsic safety in explosive or inflammable liquids.
However, this type of measuring system is much costlier than
the other similar instruments.
In this paper, a low-cost new type of noncontact capacitancetype liquid level measuring technique has been designed and
fabricated. In the conventional noncontact capacitance-type
liquid level transducer [10], [11], the air column between the
conducting liquid level and the sensing electrode of a capacitor
is used as the dielectric. This technique appears to suffer from
the error due to the frequent changes of the dielectric properties
of air as well as due to the low value of permittivity of air and,
thus, appears to have limited applications.
In the proposed technique as described in this paper, the
material of a uniform right circular cylinder made of insulting
material like glass, ceramic, nylon, polyvinyl chloride (PVC),
etc., is used as the dielectric of a cylindrical capacitor, and
thus, the defects of the conventional noncontact capacitancetype level-sensing probes may not arise in the proposed sensor.
Now, the change in capacitance of a capacitive transducer due
to a change in process variable is generally very small. Hence,
various attempts have been made by different investigators
[1][4], [7][9] to accurately measure this change in capacitance. In the present paper, an operational-amplifier (op-amp)based modified De Sauty bridge network has been designed
and fabricated to measure the change in capacitance of the
proposed level-sensing probe. In the conventional De Sauty
bridge network [15], the effect of the stray capacitance between the output leads of the bridge network may produce
error. This defect in measurement may be minimized in the
proposed bridge network with the output nodal points of the
bridge network to be at the same potentials. The experiment
is performed in both metallic and nonmetallic storage tanks
using high-density polyethylene (HDPE) tube and glass tube
level sensors. The experimental results are found to have good
repeatability, linearity, and resolution.
II. P RINCIPLE OF THE S ENSOR
Manuscript received August 17, 2004; revised November 19, 2005. This
work was supported by the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE),
Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India.
The authors are with the Department of Applied Physics, University of
Calcutta, Calcutta 700 009, India (e-mail: scb152@indiatimes.com).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIM.2006.873785
The level-sensing probe consists of a uniform hollow cylinder made of insulating material like glass, ceramic, PVC,
Teflon, etc. This cylinder is connected with a metallic storage
tank as shown in Fig. 1(a).
BERA et al.: LOW-COST NONCONTACT CAPACITANCE-TYPE LEVEL TRANSDUCER FOR A CONDUCTING LIQUID
Fig. 1.
779
1
1
ln D +
d
1
2
4r
ln (D+2t)(D+6t+4r)
D(D+2t+4r)
(1)
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 55, NO. 3, JUNE 2006
h
C1 .
2(r + t)
(2)
(r + t)
1
1
2rh
D 1 (D+2t)(D+6t+4r) .
+
ln
ln
D(D+2t+4r)
(3)
This capacitance may be assumed to be equal to the capacitance
between the liquid column of height h and the portion of the
noninductively wound two-layer coil, embraced by this liquid
column.
Inasmuch as D t and D r, the capacitance of the
short-circuited noninductively wound two-layer coil may be
approximately given by
2r1
h.
Ch =
(r + t) ln D
d
(4)
Ch = kh + Co
(8)
where
k=
21 r
= constant.
(r + t) ln D
d
(9)
If the storage vessel be designed to have vertical wall equidistant from the sensing cylinder at all points and the sensing coil
be shielded by a grounded coaxial metal screen surrounding
the sensing coil, then all the components of Co in (5) may
be assumed to be constant under constant ambient conditions.
Thus, the capacitance of a two-layer noninductive coil for a
conducting liquid in a metallic storage tank may be assumed
to be linearly related with level as shown in (8).
Now, if the metallic storage tank be coated inside by slurries
or metallic oxides due to long use, then an error capacitance
Ce1 between its metal body and the conducting liquid column
of height h may be added in series with the sensor capacitance
Ch1 and may be given by
Ce1 =
23 h
ds
ln ds 2t
s
(10)
2
4 h
d
ln d2tm
(11)
1
+ Co .
1/Ch1 + 1/Ce1 + 1/Ce2
(12)
(5)
Combining (4), (10), (11), and (12), we have
Capacitance Co may again be assumed to be connected in parallel with the test capacitance Ch1 between the liquid column
of height h and the part of the sensing coil embraced by the
liquid column. Hence, the effective capacitance of the sensing
coil with respect to the liquid column of height h may be
given by
Ch = Ch1 + Co .
or
Che =
r+t
r1
ln D +
d
1
3
2h
ds
d +Co
1
ln ds 2t
ln
+
d2t
s
4
m
(13)
or
Che = k1 h + Co
(6)
(14)
where
Combining (4) and (6), we have
Ch =
21 r
h + Co
(r + t) ln D
d
k1 =
(7)
r+t
r1
ln D +
d
1
3
2
ds
d .
1
+
ln ds 2t
ln
d2t
s
4
m
(15)
BERA et al.: LOW-COST NONCONTACT CAPACITANCE-TYPE LEVEL TRANSDUCER FOR A CONDUCTING LIQUID
Fig. 2.
781
21 r
h.
(r + t) ln D
d
(16)
r+t
1 r
2h
D 1 d
ln d + 4 ln d2tm
(18)
where
k2 =
r+t
1 r
2
D 1 d .
ln d + 4 ln (d2tm )
(19)
Co = k3 h + Cparasitic
upper + Cparasitic lower
(20)
Co = k3 h + Cparasitic
(21)
or
where Cparasitic
is the total parasitic component, and k3 is a
constant, which may be very small compared with k2 because
the permittivity of air is very small. Again, Cparasitic
upper
in (20) is due to the capacitance of the upper part of the
sensing coil and the upper edge of the liquid column, whereas
Cparasitic
lower is due to the capacitance between the lower part
of the coil below the datum level and the immersed electrode
lead wire. Hence, the effective capacitance of the sensing coil
with respect to the liquid column for a nonmetallic storage tank
may be given by
(17)
= (k2 + k3 )h + Cparasitic
Che
(22)
Che
= k4 h + Cparasitic
(23)
or
where k4 = k2 + k3 .
Now, the term Cparasitic
in (23) may be assumed to be
constant for a screened sensing probe under constant ambient
of the sensing probe
conditions, and hence, the capacitance Che
for a nonmetallic storage tank may also be assumed to be
linearly related to the liquid level like the metallic storage tank.
782
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 55, NO. 3, JUNE 2006
Fig. 3. Modified De Sauty bridge circuit for the measurement of capacitance of the liquid level transducer.
Also
(24)
V1 = jV CP.
(25)
or
I4 + I2 + If = 0
(26)
or
Vo =
jRf
[CP Q(Co + C)] V
Q
(27)
(28)
BERA et al.: LOW-COST NONCONTACT CAPACITANCE-TYPE LEVEL TRANSDUCER FOR A CONDUCTING LIQUID
783
Fig. 5. Percentage error from linearity of the HDPE and glass tube level
sensors in a metallic storage tank.
Fig. 4. Static response of the HDPE and glass tube level sensors in a metallic
storage tank.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 55, NO. 3, JUNE 2006
Fig. 6. Static response of the HDPE and glass tube level sensors in a
nonmetallic storage tank.
Fig. 7. Percentage error from linearity of the HDPE and glass tube level
sensors in a nonmetallic storage tank.
voltage signal. Moreover, the two storage tanks and the two
sensing tubes had different dimensions. Also, the level sensor
sensitivity factors (k1 for the metallic storage tank and k4 for
the nonmetallic storage tank) are different for different storage
tanks and sensing probes. Again, the HDPE and glass tube
level sensors had different dimensions with or without the
screen. Hence, the value of the datum level capacitance Co
was different for different tanks and different level sensors,
and the bridge output near balance was different for different
experiments.
The almost exactly identical results were obtained when
each experiment was repeated several times in both increasing
and decreasing modes. Hence, the repeatability of the sensor
is acceptable for any industrial application of the sensor. The
overall uncertainty in measurement of level with this developed
sensor in both the short-term and long-term bases has been
studied, keeping supply voltage, frequency, and temperature
constant, and has been found negligible with this sensor after
having a large number of repeated tests for measurement of
liquid level carried out in the laboratory. The overall sensitivity
of the developed level sensor has been experimentally found
to be 0.95 pF/mm for glass and 0.65 pF/mm for HDPE tube.
Inasmuch as this sensitivity is satisfactorily high, sensor fouling due to low excitation frequency (1000 Hz) has not been
observed during experimentation. This low operating frequency
also decreases the effect of parasitic capacitances.
The permittivity of the sensing tube material varies with
temperature and operating frequency significantly. Using a
frequency-stable oscillator, the effect of frequency is eliminated
in our present design, but the permittivity correction is required
for applications with a wide range of varying temperature.
However, it has been found experimentally that within the
ambient temperature region (2545 C), the error due to permittivity variation lies between 0.25% and 1.5%. However, this
error due to the variation of permittivity with temperature may
be easily eliminated by using a suitable temperature correction
technique from the knowledge of the variation of the permittivity with temperature.
The modified De Sauty bridge circuit was found to give
more stable results than the conventional De Sauty bridge
circuit used in the capacitance-type level probe. Here, it may
be mentioned that for the bridge setup as shown in Fig. 3, the
circuit common and the storage tank ground should be isolated
from each other. Hence, during the design and experimental
work, proper care should be taken so that this isolation may
not be disturbed by any means; otherwise, the results may be
erroneous. To avoid the incidental or accidental short circuiting
between these two grounds, a noninverting-type op-amp-based
circuit may be used as explained in Fig. 8 in the Appendix.
The metallic screen used as electrical shield of the sensor
does not require any bootstrap type of active guard because the
bridge is balanced at datum level by proper selection of bridge
arm components. The op-amps used in the bridge network
have 1-MHz bandwidth. Thus, the selected operating frequency
(1 kHz) does not produce any bandwidth error.
The use of the metallic sheet instead of the sensing coil is
simpler. The experiment was first attempted by wrapping a
thin copper sheet around the sensing cylinder. However, the
sensitivity was found to be very small with wide deviation from
linearity. This may be due to the possibility of the existence of
an air film capacitance between the copper sheet and the sensing
tube connected in series with the test capacitance. Moreover,
the effective area conductive plate of the sensor is large, and the
eddy current induced in the metallic plate tends to disturb the
electrostatic field pattern inside the dielectric material. Thus,
the noninductively wound coil used instead of the metallic sheet
eliminates this effect.
The basic materials for making this level sensor are simple
glass tube and enameled copper wire. The signal conditioning
circuit involves low-cost semiconductor devices. The construction technique does not involve any high-cost technology compared with existing noncontact level sensors such as ultrasonic
gauge and nuclear absorption level gauge. From the experimental study, the repeatability, linearity, and resolution are satisfactory within the tolerable limit of industrial level measurement.
BERA et al.: LOW-COST NONCONTACT CAPACITANCE-TYPE LEVEL TRANSDUCER FOR A CONDUCTING LIQUID
Fig. 8.
785
Modified bridge circuit for the level transducer of grounded storage tank.
(b)
A PPENDIX
To avoid the incidental and accidental short circuiting between the circuit ground and tank ground, a bridge circuit
diagram as shown in Fig. 8 may be used.
The branch currents in the arms AB, AD, BC, and CD for
bridge supply voltage V are, respectively, given by
I1 = jV C
I2 = jV Cx
(d)
I3 = (V1 V )/P
I4 = (V1 V )/Q.
(c)
(a)
Vo = V jRf C.
(e)
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 55, NO. 3, JUNE 2006
R EFERENCES
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Subrata Chattopadhyay was born in West Bengal, India, in 1965. He received the B.Tech. degree
in electrical engineering and the M.Tech. degree
in instrumentation engineering from the University
of Calcutta, Calcutta, India, in 1991 and 1993,
respectively.
He is currently an Assistant Professor in Electrical
Engineering and Professor-in-charge, P. G. Studies,
National Institute of Technical Teachers Training
and Research, Kolkata, India, under the Ministry of
Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India, Calcutta. He is currently involved in research for the investigation
on some new/modified techniques of measurement and control instrumentation.