You first need to understand what pressure is.

Without a thorough understanding of pressure you will never understand some of the basic concepts of instrumentation. Air have weight. This can be proven by a simple primary school experiment of taking a balancing beam and attached two balloons to it. With the two balloons deflated the balancing beam hangs exactly horizontal and the weight is obviously equal on both sides of the beam. If you now inflate one balloon the balancing beam will drop down on the inflated end proving that air have a definite and specific weight, since the volume of air on the one side is now more than on the deflated side and therefore the weight is more. Pressure is measured on the surface of the earth as the weight of the air from space pushing down on the surface of the earth. The reason air and any other body have a weight is due to the earth's gravity. Since the gravity of the earth pull less the further you move away from the earth's surface, the atmospheric pressure changes as well and become less since the weight of air from that point to space is less. Therefore on top of the Himalayas the atmospheric pressure is much less than at sea level. It takes a lot of years to get use to the low density

of the air up there and us normal people that are use to higher density air find it difficult to breath up there. The reason is the lower atmospheric pressure or the lower density of the air due to the shorter distance from space to that height. We all know that water is always at the same level due to the earth's gravity being the same all over the world, so therefore if we look at the level of the sea it will be at the same level in Canada as it is in Africa and the same at the coast in China. It is therefore accurate to use the sea as our reference point when we measure the atmospheric pressure. So we therefore always refer to world standard atmospheric pressure as it is at sea level and is therefore a standard throughout the world. In simple terms the distance from sea level to space at any place on the surface of the earth is exactly the same. Therefore the atmospheric pressure at sea level any place on earth is the same. This atmospheric air weight is the reason why we have a measurable amount of air pressure and is therefore referred to as the atmospheric air pressure pushing down onto the surface of the earth. This atmospheric pressure is a specific amount of pressure and is the same all over the world at sea level. The amount

is 101,3 Kpa (a) or 14,7 PSI.(a) or 760mmHg(a). You should memorize these values. These values is also refer to as the ABSOLUTE pressure or 1 atmosphere. Note the (a) on the end? If you write atmospheric pressures down you have to add the (a) to indicate to other people that you are referring to atmospheric pressure and not gauge pressure. Gauge pressure is very simply what we call zero pressure at 1 atmospheric pressure at sea level. Just makes life a bit easier to work in gauge pressure than trying to work in atmospheric pressure all the time. So to summarize, zero gauge pressure is equal to 1 atmosphere or 14,7 PSI atmospheric or absolute pressure. Be aware you will find that some people will also write it like this: 14,7PSIA or 101,3KpaA. NB!! Zero pressure absolute, is a complete vacuum and a complete vacuum is impossible to achieve on earth. The closest you will ever get is -0,99999Bar but never -1,013bar. Where most of the confusion comes in is to find out from what platform someone is refering to when they talk about absolute pressures. What you are suppose to do is to always stay on the platform

of gauge pressure, since this is the world standard we work on in instrumentation, and then refer to absolute pressure from there. This means you will refer to absolute pressure in the negative like - 30Kpa or -200mmHg. In this case it is in reference to gauge pressure so you do not add the (a). Should you put yourself on the absolute pressure platform you would refer to the same pressure as +70Kpa(a) and +560mmHg(a). Most of the time people refer to absolute pressure in mercury but you may use any UOM you feel comfortable with. In mercury, absolute pressure is -760mmHg standing on the gauge pressure platform or 0mmHg standing on the absolute pressure platform. NB!!! Be careful with this since there is a big difference to calibrate a pressure switch for instance to 200mmHg(a) and -200mmHg(g). 200mmHg(a) is equal to -560mmHg(g) and -200mmHg(g) is equal to 560mmHg(a), so by calibrating the switch for -200mmhg(g) and the specs refer to absolute pressure, your pressure switch will not trip your application on 200mmHg(a) but only on 560mmHg(a). The same when you work on a absolute pressure transmitter. Try to stay on the gauge platform where possible since it makes life a bit easier and less confusion will occur.

Absolute pressure transmitters are normally used on vacuum applications or applications where you work in gauge pressure most of the time, but with a possibility of negative pressures that could occur. Referring now only to smart transmitters, we calibrate a normal smart pressure transmitter for example to something like this, LRV = 0Bar and URV = 2Bar. The calibration of a smart absolute pressure transmitter will look something like this, LRV = -1Bar and URV = 0Bar, or LRV = -760mmHg to URV = 0mmHg, again saying on the gauge platform. It is not recommended but you can, if you need to, calibrate your tx to absolute pressures as well but then you need to chance your units of measure on the transmitter to absolute pressure. That is if your transmitter have the facility to do so, otherwise the transmitter will work with the measured pressures as if it is gauge pressures and your transmitter will not work. Try and stay on the gauge platform to avoid confusing yourself and others. Watch out for the following as well. With the previous era of pressure transmitters where we had to use hand pumps and zero and span pots to calibrate the pressure transmitters we also had to install absolute

pressure transmitters. The golden rule when working with these transmitters was that you NEVER do a zero calibration on them since they have already been calibrated by the manufacturer for as close to absolute zero as possible. So when you install the transmitter it will immediately indicate atmospheric pressure and all you need to do is to pump the transmitter up and adjust the span pot to where the max pressure should be. Remember span adjustments do not affect your zero but a zero adjustment will affect your span calibration. Now based on this you will find that someone will blow a casket if you tell them you have done a zero trim on a smart absolute pressure transmitter. This is a joke since all smart pressure transmitter can measure up to -1Bar so all smart pressure transmitters are really all absolute pressure transmitters as well. So as a final word from me, don't make things complicated. Before you start your absolute pressure calibration on a smart transmitter, open it up to atmosphere and do a zero trim on it and then just add your -1Bar to +1Bar or whatever the calibration should be in with the HART and give it back to production. Simple as that. It will work perfectly, just

make sure the calibration values are the same as on the DCS faceplate. Good luck