Scintilla SC600

PCME recently released its Scintilla SC600 series of monitors for dust emission monitoring. This new monitoring technique has been designed to replace the widely used opacity monitors currently found in most dust monitoring situations. Optical scintillation offers a tenfold increase in resolution and far less stringent maintenance requirements.

Opacity monitors currently in use work on the principle of passing a light beam across the airflow. The heavier the particulate concentration, the greater the reduction in light intensity. These monitoring systems have been reliable but have at least two problematic shortcomings:

• they require a high level of maintenance due to lens contamination
  
• resolution is limited to 25mg/m² dust concentration

The Scintilla SC600 works on the principle of optical scintillation, based on a light beam passing through the airflow. But rather than measuring beam intensity, the PCME Scintilla measures temporal variation or scintillation. The scintillation results form the statistical variations in the distribution of particles in the airstream. The higher the concentration of particle the greater the range of variation. This method had the added benefit that the measurement is unaffected by lens contamination.

The scintillation technique is practically independent of the value of light intensity, down to very low light levels. Scintillation measurements are therefore both reliable and repeatable. The monitor can be calibrated by an isokinetic sample test to give concentration readouts directly in mg/m².

Key Advantages of Scintillation:

• low maintenance since there is no significant deterioration in performance until lenses are more than 90% coated
  
• 10x the resolution of opacity monitors (2.5 against 25mg/m²)
  
• suitable for dust concentration form 2.5 to 1000mg/m²

Westech Industrial Ltd., 5636 Burbank Crescent S.E., Calgary, AB T2H 1Z6. Tel: 403-252-8803; Fax: 403-253-6803.