Our insight on sight glasses and how they work within industry applications

In the chemical, food, and pharmaceutical process industries, sight glasses have become incredibly crucial to effective operations, meaning that many site managers and engineers have become reliant on them.

In this article, Process Industry Forum spoke to BM Engineering Supplies, one of the leading UK suppliers of solutions to the process industries, to find out more about sight glass applications, the range of sight glasses they stock from various sight glass manufacturers.

Why are sight glasses used?

What makes sight glass so popular within these industries is that it allows plant managers and/or engineers to take a look inside their systems without having to disturb the environment within. By utilising sight glasses, a person would be able to see the levels of liquid or gas their application is using as they travel through a critical point of any particular design.

As stated by Scott Miller of BM Engineering Supplies, “sight glasses allow you to monitor any possible pressure changes, and essentially anything else that sight glass windows allow you to see.” Scott went on to explain that it is due to this widespread use of sight glasses that they have become “critical to various operations.”

What is necessary for sight glass applications?

When looking to implement system monitoring within your processes, it is incredibly important to implement the correct kind of sight glass from a reliable sight glass manufacturer. It is of utmost importance that a sight glass is able to withstand all materials and fluids that it will come into contact with as you do not want the glass to become tarnished or degraded. If the glass on your sight glass did become impacted in this way, your ability to use it for system monitoring would be significantly impacted.

So long as they are kept in good condition, sight glasses are essential to the processes they are used for and for that reason are specifically designed for user-friendliness. When looking into a sight glass, the level of fluid that is present against the glass represents the level of fluid that is at that point of the system. If bubbles appear against the glass, this is a clear indication of a liquid/vapor mix.

Sight glasses from BM Engineering

Scott Miller from BM Engineering went on to tell us how they supply a wide range of sight glasses from a variety of well-known manufacturers, such as equipment specialists INOXPA and Valsteam ADCA. BM Engineering offers many popular varieties of sight glasses, including tubular, circular, and flat.

Sight glasses from BM Engineering comes in three varieties:

• Tubular sight glass
• Circular sight glass
• Sight flow glass.

To learn more about BM Engineering’s range of sight glasses and other pipeline ancillary equipment, head over to their website now and see how they can help you solve your process problems.