3D level scanners or volume measurement technology is an Israeli innovation designated to measure the volume of different materials. It is based on acoustical signal that penetrates dust and measures the material, whether solid or powder, by sending a signal and estimating how long it gets back to the device.
One of the challenges of large scale manufacturing in various industries such as food, cement, chemicals, plastics and others is accurately assessing the inventory in order to manage properly the full production process.
There are many types of silos and other storage bins of different sizes and shapes that differ in many basic characteristics such as particle size, particle type, dielectric constants and more. The conditions inside the storage containers and silos make the measurement process hard as they are dusty, have irregular surfaces anomalies and are subject to unbalanced filling and emptying.
The Existing Technologies and Their Drawbacks:
The main three technologies until recently for measuring the level of solid materials inside silos and other containers measure the material only at one point of the surface thus fail to provide adequately accurate measure of the average level of the material. Another technology in this field subtracts the weight of an empty container from a filled container. The main shortcoming of this technology is that it is expensive and requires a built-in of load cells in the silo.
The 3D level scanner offers a different solution. The technology is based on low frequency echoes that measure the whole surface of the content and not just one random point. The scanner not only measures the level of the content but also the volume and mass of the content. The system employs an array of beam-former that send low frequency pulses from the material of the container. The signal is analyzed by the device and produces 3-dimensional image of the material surface displayed on a remote screen.
The advantage of the scanner is that it can measure any kind of material; it is not restricted to just one kind as many other sensors and scanners in the market. As mentioned before, not only the device measures the level of the content but also the volume and mass. Another prominent advantage is that the device can measure the content in different environmental conditions such as dusty conditions. The scanner can be useful for different industries including the food industry, the plastic industry, bioenergy industry and more.
