NEAR EAST UNIVERSITY

Faculty of Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering

EE-424 Process control & Instrumentation Technology

THERMAL SENSORS

PREPARED BY: Date: Submitted To:

Hafiz Adil Rasool(20062460) 29 November 2012 Assist. Prof. Dr. Kadri BORONCOK

NICOSIA 2012

INTRODUCTION
Thermal sensors are used to measure heat-related quantities, such as temperatures, heat flux, heat capacity. Non contacting sensors are called Radiation Sensors.

Types of Thermal sensors There are many types of thermal sensors used to measure temperature 1. Thermocouple 2. RTD 3. Thermistor

1. THERMOCOUPLE
One of the most common industrial thermal sensors is the thermocouple. It was discovered by Thomas Seebeck's in 1822. He noted that a voltage difference appeared when the wire was heated at one end. Regardless of temperature, if both ends were at the same temperature there was no voltage difference. If the circuit were made with wire of the same material there was no current flow.

The Operating Principle

A thermocouple is a device made by two different wires joined at one end, called junction end or measuring end. The two wires are called thermo-elements or legs of the thermocouple: the two thermo-elements are distinguished as positive and negative ones. The other end of the thermocouple is called tail end or reference end. The junction end is immersed in the enviroment whose temperature T2 has to be measured, which can be for instance the temperature of a furnace at about 500C, while the tail end is held at a different temperature T1, e.g. at ambient temperature.

Because of the temperature difference between junction end and tail end a voltage difference can be measured between the two thermo-elements at the tail end: so the thermocouple is a temperature-voltage transducer.

The temperature vs voltage relationship is given by:

Where Emf is the Electro-Motive Force or Voltage produced by the thermocouple at the tail end, T1 and T2 are the temperatures of reference and measuring end respectively, S12 is called Seebeck coefficient of the thermocouple and S1 and S2 are the Seebeck coefficient of the two thermoelements; the Seebeck coefficient depends on the material the thermoelement is made of. Looking at above Equation it can be noticed that: 1. A null voltage is measured if the two thermoelements are made of the same materials: different materials are needed to make a temperature sensing device, 2. A null voltage is measured if no temperature difference exists between the tail end and the junction end: a temperature difference is needed to operate the thermocouple, 3. The Seebeck coefficient is temperature dependent. In order to clarify the first point when a temperature difference is applied between the two ends of a single Ni wire a voltage drop is developed across the wire itself. The end of the wire at the highest temperature, T2, is called hot end, while the end at the lowest temperature, T1, is called cold end.

Emf produced by a single wire When a voltmeter, with Cu connection wires, is used to measure the voltage drop across the Ni wire, two junctions need to be made at the hot and cold ends between the Cu wire and the Ni wire; assuming that the voltmeter is at room temperature T1, one of the Cu wires of the voltmeter will experience along it the same temperature drop from T2 to T1 the Ni wire is experiencing. In the attempt to measure the voltage drop on the Ni wire a Ni-Cu thermocouple has been made and so the measured voltage is in reality the voltage drop along the Ni wire plus the voltage drop along the Cu wire. The Emf along a single thermoelement cannot be measured: the Emf measured at the tail end in is the sum of the voltage drop along each of the thermoelements. As two thermoelements are needed, the temperature measurement with thermocouples is a differential measurement.

The temperature measurement with thermocouples is also a differential measurement because two different temperatures, T1 and T2, are involved. The desired temperature is the one at the junction end, T2. In order to have a useful transducer for measurement, a monotonic Emf versus junction end temperature T2 relationship is needed, so that for each temperature at the junction end a unique voltage is produced at the tail end. However, from the integral in above equation it can be understood that the Emf depends on both T1 and T2: as T1 and T2 can change independently, a monotonic Emf vs T2 relationship cannot be defined if the tail end temperature is not constant. For this reason the tail end is maintained in an ice bath made by crushed ice and water in a Dewar flask: this produces a reference temperature of 0C. All the voltage versus temperature relationships for thermocouples are referenced to 0C. The resulting measuring system required for a thermocouple is shown below.

A measuring system for thermocouples

In order to measure the voltage at the tail end, two copper wires are connected between the thermoelements and the voltmeter: both the Cu wires experience the same temperature difference and as a result the voltage drops along each of them are equal to each other and cancel out in the measurement at the voltmeter. The ice bath is usually replaced in industrial application with an integrated circuit called cold junction compensator: in this case the tail end is at ambient temperature and the temperature fluctuations at the tail end are tolerated; in fact the cold junction compensator produces a voltage equal to the thermocouple voltage between 0C and ambient temperature, which can be added to the voltage of the thermocouple at the tail end to reproduce the voltage versus temperature relationship of the thermocouple.

A sketch of a thermocouple with cold junction compensation is reported below.

An example of Cold Junction Compensation

It should be underlined that the cold junction compensation cannot reproduce exactly the voltage versus temperature relationship of the thermocouple, but can only approximate it: for this reason the cold junction compensation introduces an error in the temperature measurement. Figure4 shows also the filtering and amplification of the thermocouple. Being the thermocouple voltage a DC signal, removal of AC noise through filtering is beneficial; furthermore the thermocouples produce voltage of few tens of mV and for this reason amplification is required. The small voltage range for some of the most common thermocouples (letter designated thermocouples) is shown in Figure5, where their voltage versus temperature relationship is reported. Type R, S and B thermocouples use Pt-base thermoelements and they can operate at temperatures up to 1700C; however they are more expensive and their voltage output is lower than type K and type N thermocouples, which use Ni-base thermoelements. However, Ni base thermocouples can operate at lower temperatures than the Pt-base ones. Table1 reports the approximate compositions for positive and negative thermoelements of the letter designated thermocouples.

Figure5: Voltage vs Temperature relationship for letter-designated thermocouples

RTD
Resistance Temperature Detectors or RTDs for short, are wire wound and thin film devices that measure temperature because of the physical principle of the positive temperature coefficient of electrical resistance of metals. The hotter they become, the larger or higher the value of their electrical resistance. They, in the case of Platinum known variously as PRTs and PRT100s, are the most popular RTD type, nearly linear over a wide range of temperatures and some small enough to have response times of a fraction of a second. They are among the most precise temperature sensors available with resolution and measurement uncertainties or 0.1 C or better possible in special decisions. Usually they are provided encapsulated in probes for temperature sensing and measurement with an external indicator, controller or transmitter, or enclosed inside other devices where they measure temperature as a part of the device's function, such as a temperature controller or precision thermostat.

Often the lead error can be minimized through use of a temperature transmitter mounted close to the RTD. Transmitters convert the resistance measurement to an analog current or serial digital signal that can be sent long distances by wire or rf to a data acquisition or control system and/or indicator. RTDs, as mentioned above, work in a relatively small temperature domain, compared to thermocouples, typically from about -200 C to a practical maximum of about 650 to 700 C. Some makers claim wider ranges and some construction designs are limited to only a small portion of the usual range. Insulation resistance is always a function of temperature and at relatively high temperature the shunt resistance of the insulator introduces errors into measurement. Again, error estimates are straight forward, provided one has a good estimate of the thermal properties of the insulator. Insulator material such as powdered magnesia (MgO), alumina (Al2O3) and similar compounds are carefully dried and sealed when encapsulated in probes along with an RTD element. ASTM has standards related to insulation resistance testing to help determine the performance of such sealed probes, specifically E 1652-00. RTDs Other Than Platinum RTDs can be made cheaply in Copper and Nickel, but the latter have restricted ranges because of nonlinearities and wire oxidation problems in the case of Copper. Platinum is the preferred material for precision measurement because in its pure form the Temperature Coefficient of Resistance is nearly linear; enough so that temperature measurements with precision of 0.1 C can be readily achieved with moderately priced devices. Better resolution is possible, but equipment costs escalate rapidly at smaller error levels. All RTDs used in precise temperature measurements are made of Platinum and they are sometimes called PRTs to distinguish them. Standard Platinum RTDs(SPRTs) The ITS-90 (International Temperature Scale of 1990- used as a worldwide practical temperature scale in national metrology labs like NIST, NPL et al) is made up of a number of fixed reference points with various interpolating devices used to define the scale between points. A special set of PRTs, called SPRTs, are used to perform the interpolation in such labs over the ranges 13.8033 K (Triple point of Equilibrium Hydrogen) to the Freezing point of Silver, 971.78 C.

THERMISTORS
The thermistor is also a temperature sensitive resistor. While the thermocouple is the most versatile temperature transducer and the PRTD is the most stable, the word that best describes the thermistor is sensitive. Of the three major categories of sensors, the thermistor exhibits by far the largest parameter change with temperature. Thermistors are generally composed of semiconductor materials. Although positive temperature coefficient units are available, most thermistors have a negative temperature coefficient (TC); that is, their resistance decreases with increasing temperature. The negative T.C. can be as large as several percent per degree Celsius, allowing the thermistor circuit to detect minute changes in temperature which could not be observed with an RTD or thermocouple circuit. The price we pay for this increased sensitivity is loss of linearity. The thermistor is an extremely non-linear device which is highly dependent upon process parameters. Consequently, manufacturers have not standardized thermistor curves to the extent that RTD and thermocouple curves have been standardized. An individual thermistor curve can be very closely approximated through use of the Steinhart-Hart equation: