Trend towards measurement

Some 21 years ago, BEKO Technologies was a small 10 year old company which had a home base in Germany and two subsidiaries in the UK and USA. The company was founded by Berthold Koch, an engineer. His idea of a condensate drain valve which worked on a level sensing basis using the changing capacitance to work a switch and only eject liquids, was initially rejected because ‘there is no market for such a device at that price’. BK, as he was known, was not to be stopped and the result is that today BEKO
Technologies is a global business with manufacturing sites on three continents.

 

The BEKOMAT, as the drain was named, has become the generic device fitted on many brands of compressor, dryer, air receiver and filter, with more than 2,000,000 installations worldwide.

 

Diversification into measurement is seen as a logical development in the compressed air business. Companies want to know if they are getting what they paid for in terms of flow, pressure or air quality; they may be facing quality audits or they may simply be protecting their employees’ health and safety.

 

The flagship product of BEKO’s burgeoning measuring division is the METPOINT OCV which measures the remaining oil content in compressed air down to 0.003ppm (better than Class 1 to ISO 8573-1).

 

This allows real time monitoring. In the past few companies bothered to test oil content beyond the use of impact tubes or taking a flow of air through an absorbent material and then having it spectroscopically analysed.

 

The result is only able to detect to Class 2 and if results come back showing that there is hydrocarbon above C6 present, what happens next? Product recall, to when, how
many, at what cost? The METPOINT OCV obviates all of this at a reasonable cost.

 

There is an interesting phenomenon though. Many companies installing the METPOINT OCV have seen readings significantly higher than expected. Comments like "I have an oil free compressor and it is reading Class 2, it must be faulty!” were common. BEKO Technologies realised that the oil free compressors were working well but if
you put hydrocarbons in through the inlet they will be there at the measuring device.

 

This is not a slur on oil free compressors but most factories with oil free compressors are in industrial zones where the concentration of hydrocarbon molecules in the air is high and because air intake filters are not designed to remove them they will pass straight through the compressor and present themselves as vapour and aerosol at the METPOINT OCV device. This is easily solved by fitting a carbon tower or a catalytic converter to remove last traces of hydrocarbon presence.

 

BEKO Technologies sees the trend towards measuring and control as being significant in the future of the compressed air industry and intends to be there at the sharp end.

 

For more information www.beko-technologies.co.uk
Tel: 01527 575778