Over 200,000 thermal mass flow measurement or control instruments from Brooks are installed Worldwide - in processing plants, blending control, semiconductor manufacture, laboratories and pilot plants.

Many of these processes have used the Brooks 0154 secondary electronics display and operator interface unit, to provide the operator console displaying flow values and allowing remote fine adjustment. These units allow control of up to four flow lines, using either the thermal mass flow controller or line pressure controller for gas monitoring, or Flomega thermal mass or Quantim Coriolis mass flow meters and controllers for liquid monitoring. The 0154 unit also allows blending system control functions, using the mass flow measurement on the main delivery line as the master reading, then providing the control function to drive further mass flow controllers on subsidiary slave doping lines.

The 0154 display unit has now been upgraded to accept RS232 communications connection from a PC system or laptop, allowing direct digital control and monitoring of the process lines.

This new model is compatible with all previously installed analogue mass flow measurement systems, allowing these units to be upgraded to achieve digital communication where needed.

This approach avoids the need to replace existing plant instruments with the newer versions now compatible with RS485, Profibus or DeviceNet protocols - it also avoids the need for multiple analogue to digital convertors, which was the other approach possible to achieve simple computer interfacing.

The mass flow controllers and 0154 display units are distributed by Flotech Solutions of Stockport, the Brooks exclusive sales organisation for the UK and Ireland.