Allengra’s Smart Valve: World’s First Ultrasonic-Based Control Valve Unveiled at ISH 2017 in Frankfurt

Allengra's Smart Valve is a volume flow sensor and controller in one: It measures flow, temperature and pressure at the same time, controlling the flow of liquids.

The Allengra Smart Valve is a new combination of ultrasonic flow sensor and control valve for heating, water, food and pharmaceutical industries. As the first control valve on the market that works based on the ultrasonic measurement technology, it is a volume flow sensor and controller in one, simultaneously measuring flow, temperature and pressure and controlling the flow of liquids.

For example, it can control a heating circuit with a specific water volume, regardless of the resistance in the heating pipes. This compensates for large pressure fluctuations to meter and control liquids with high precision and consistency.

Advantage through experience and observation

Allengra GmbH, founded in 2005, has significant experience in the development and production of ultrasonic flow sensors, including for global companies in the heating industry and energy management such as Viessmann and Weishaupt.

 Allengra's dynamic team is constantly challenging itself to incorporate new innovative ideas into its customers' products. With the many different test benches that Allengra set up in the past, a basic set of flow sensors emerged that contained more or less the same elements:

• A sensor for the pipe pressure, one for the differential pressure, combined with a sensor for the static pressure
• A temperature sensor and a sensor for the flow and volume of the medium
• An actuator and a valve for flow control

Industrial Customers Support the Development

This is how the idea for the Smart Valve was born: Allengra set out to design a simple and compact sensor with a well-evaluated and tested actuator combined with a ceramic valve control system. Some of Allengra's existing customers have been involved in the development of the highly integrated valve since 2014, and over the following years other companies have expressed interest in the OEM product to upgrade and upgrade their heating and dosing applications.

After 3 years of testing and evaluation, Allengra has now achieved full integration of the Smart Valve, which will be vividly presented at the booth at ISH 2017 in Frankfurt. 

For the new technology, Allengra invested in a prototype production line for the ceramic technology, which was originally used to produce the flow controller and offers the advantage of low required torque and high density. The actuators were developed, evaluated and optimized in cooperation with an experienced gearbox designer. In order to meet all the requirements for mechanical design and production, Allengra also invested in a new milling machine with a direct CAD/CAM connection and expanded its machine park with several plastic injection molding machines.

Eliminating Interface Problems: Smart Valve as an Industry 4.0 component

The digitization of industrial processes helps manufacturing companies today to handle large amounts of data and deal with complexity. Productivity gains can be achieved more easily through technical support, for example through the visualization of information flows. 

The potential for successful digitization of a company lies in production, among other things. The standardization of processes is an important prerequisite for this. With the Smart Valve, Allengra helps its customers with digitization by developing products that eliminate interface problems and thus help to make production data available for the company's Industry 4.0 landscape.

 Functions and Applications:

•  The Smart Valve is 
• The Smart Valve covers a wide range of applications:
• Heating distribution
• Permanent automatic hydraulic balancing of a heating system
• Targeted reduction of the noise level of radiators
• Constant flow control even under special conditions such as high pressure changes
• Level control by measuring defined volumes and pressure
• Uniform and level-independent regulation of the outflow from a tank
•  Exact dosing of beverages

Specifications

The Smart Valve is available in three different versions:

• DN½" for flow rates from 3 to 600 l/h
• DN¾" for flow rates from 5 to 2.500 l/h
• DN1" for flow volumes from 15 to 5000 l/h
• DN32 for flow volumes from 25 to 12.000 l/h

The ultrasonic control valve can handle a temperature range of 5-100 °C and a pressure of 0 to 6 bar. Communication takes place, for example, via UART, PWM, a pulse output, etc. If desired, the power supply can be provided with a lithium battery for several years.

The Smart Valve is almost entirely made of plastic or brass if required, therefore there are no mechanical moving parts in the sensors, suspended particles, dirt or sand do not affect long-term stability or the accuracy of the measurement. The control valve is also very suitable for use in the food industry, as the hygienic requirements can easily be met due to the lack of dead spaces.