HVAC Pressure Sensors
Optimized for HVAC System Requirements
Pressure sensors play an important role in energy conservation and ensuring HVAC systems are performing at maximum capacity. Sensors are used for measuring air pressure in many different air handling devices and applications. Some of the more common are depicted in the image below:
HV Series Differential Pressure Sensors
The HV Series’ wide dynamic range is ideally suited to provide multiple pressure ranges in a single package, thus minimizing the number of sensor variants required to support the demanding functional requirements of the HVAC market.
Measuring dry air and non‐aggressive gas pressure, the HV has an extremely low noise floor and stable zero point, resulting in the highest levels of accuracy, steadiest long-term stability and lowest error rates. Our unique Multi-Range technology enables the HV Series to support up to 8 pressure ranges in one device starting with pressure ranges as low as 25 pascals.
Power on time is also a consideration and with warm‐up in the range of just a few minutes, the HV Series is an excellent choice for time critical installation applications.
HS Series DPT Sub-System
Offering the greatest flexibility, the HS Series easily supports any custom configuration of pressure range, output configuration, bandwidth, etc. via a simple software interface where you fully define and implement product features in minutes.
A single device can be customized to support any of 32 pressure ranges from 25 Pa to 15 kPa with many field selectable features. These features can easily be set at the factory without additional programming or hardware changes. In addition, the same platform can be used to create a full featured DPT or a simple/dedicated pressure transmitter.
Analog interfaces have been added with easy-to-use configuration software to greatly accelerate engineering development efforts while simplifying system calibration testing in manufacturing.
HV Series – Differential Pressure Sensors
FEATURES
- Highly integrated dual sensors with ADC and DSP
- Selectable pressure range from ±0.1 to ±60 inH2O
- Integrated 50/60Hz Notch Filter
- Selectable bandwidth filter from 0.1Hz to 10Hz
- Very high accuracy ±0.1% of selected range
- Long term stability ±0.1% of FSS in first year
- Advanced digital filtering (optional)
- Integrated closed loop control (optional)
- Temperature compensated from 0°C to 50°C
- Supply voltage compensation
- Fully integrated compensation math
- Standard I2C and SPI interfaces
HS Series – Differential Pressure Transmitter Sub-System
FEATURES
- Supports full featured pressure transmitter
- Up to 12 field selectable DIP Switch functions supported
- Up to 2 push button functions supported
- Factory programmable pressure ranges
- Up to 32 field selectable pressure ranges
- Up to 4 field selectable bandwidths
- Supports bidirectional/unidirectional/asymmetric outputs
- Supports 0-5/0-10/1-5/2-10 Volts outputs
- Very high accuracy ±0.1% of selected range
- Long term stability ±0.1% of FSS in first year
- Integrated 50/60 Hz notch filter
- Temperature Compensated 0°C to 50°C
- Configuration software included
- Hardware reference platforms available
Engineering Design Resources
3D Model & Configurator: HV Series
Select product requirements from table to see the order part number. In addition, view & download 3D Model in native CAD format.
(model download requires registration at CADENAS PARTsolutions)
Getting Part Info…
CP301-SM06-R
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90° Port Adapters
Depending on your product design, you may need the ports facing to the sides instead of the top. Superior offers highly reliable, high quality adapters that plug into the two ports of our pressure sensors for easy implementation. With these 90° adapters, there is no need to worry about z-height.
90° adapters are available with and without o-rings:
KP-RAR: without o-rings
KP-ROR: with o-rings
Adapters are offered in packages of 50 and 1000.
Recommended NimbleSense Features for HV Series
One device can support up to 8 different pressure ranges from 25 Pa (0.1” H2O) to 15 kPa (60” H2O) across the HV Series, and each pressure range is factory calibrated and optimized ensuring no degradation in total error band, accuracy or stability regardless of the range selected. This eliminates the complexity and headaches of working with multiple sensors.
Instead of having to research, purchase and design-in multiple parts, a single Multi-Range part simplifies both the design and manufacturing of a product. Designing in the same part throughout your designs is much more efficient than having to select multiple components. When you design in each of the Superior pressure sensors, the setting of the pressure is done via a single software command. It’s that simple. Add the fact that there is only one product to inventory, and your manufacturing team will also appreciate the value of Multi-Range!
Benefits of Multi-Range Technology include:
- Design flexibility with ability to ‘tweak’ pressure range throughout development cycle
- Simplified product design with one sensor replacing up to 8 different sensors
- Ability to quickly develop product variants at different pressure ranges without changing hardware design
- Greater economies of scale by purchasing larger quantities of the same product
- Reduced manufacturing complexity and costs due to simplified calibration of sensors
- Up to 8x reduction in sensor inventory costs and product obsolescence
- Allows manufacturers to build fewer product variants, significantly lowering working capital requirements and inventory
Closed Loop Control adds capabilities to set and maintain flow rates via pressure management by directly controlling motors, valves and actuators. Superior offers the option to have this capability integrated into the sensor in order to more effectively set and maintain flow rates by directly controlling motors, valves and actuators to maintain flow rate targets.
The integrated Closed Loop Control design significantly reduces loop delays in the electronic circuit by up to 100x. This integrated solution also eliminates the need to design and implement a complex control loop system, resulting in more efficient, more reliable and less costly products. Closed Loop Control is of extreme value in medical respiratory devices such as ventilators and CPAP, as well as in air quality measurement products.
The figure below shows a block diagram of an implementation of the Superior Closed Loop Control for an air quality application. In order to effectively measure the air quality, we require maintaining a constant/known airflow through the viewing window. The differential pressure across the venturi directly measures the flow into this viewing window. The system sets a target pressure level across the venturi and the differential pressure sensor automatically increases or decreases the drive to the pump to maintain the targeted differential pressure, ensuring a constant airflow into the viewing window. This is accomplished with the NimbleSense closed loop circuit used in combination with the company’s proprietary noise filtering, resulting in greater than 100x reduction in loop delay.
Benefits of the integrated Closed Loop Control include:
- Greatly reduce loop delays to improve accuracy and responsiveness of your product
- Improve the reliability of your product by eliminating discrete parts
- Reduce your overall system costs
- Minimize system power and heat
- Simplify your product design
- Speed your time to market
Superior’s advanced digital filter is a multi-order filter that utilizes advanced filtering capabilities on the front-end of the sub-system to eliminate critical noise created by fans, blowers or other dry air/gas sources prior to reaching the pressure sensing sub-system. The NimbleSense advanced filtering capability removes sensor induced mechanical noise before it becomes an error signal that can adversely impact overall system performance. In customer deployments where our sensor replaced a competing component, we have seen greater than 10x reduction in sensor induced noise, thus greatly improving the SNR of the sensor output. In very low pressure systems, the improvement is even more significant.
Incorporating both standard and optional digital filters, this feature provides significantly better noise reduction and eliminates the need to design an external filtering system, resulting in more efficient, more reliable and less costly products. Our advanced digital filtering is optimized for each application to ensure mixed sampling noise is kept well below the noise floor. By removing the mechanical noise, we maximize overall system performance.
The example below is of a 4th order FIR filter customized to block pump noise above 50 Hz, which has noise of equal magnitude as the signal of interest. The lower graphs show the resulting impact of the advanced digital filtering.
Benefits of the advanced digital filtering technology include:
- Greatly reduced system noise levels by 10x or more, especially important in very low pressure applications. For noise prone systems, an improvement of 100x to 1000x is not unreasonable.
- Eliminate noise sources such as fans and blowers before they reach the pressure sensing sub-system.
- Simplify product design with an integrated approach.
- Speed time to market by not having to design an external filtering system.
As all of Superior’s pressure sensors have an extremely low noise floor, theoretically power line interference can be ‘heard’ when taking measurements. The integrated 50Hz/60Hz notch filter eliminates this noise so you maintain the advantage of having such a low noise floor pressure sensor without any external interference. With the notch filter seamlessly integrated in the pressure sensor module, the sensor blocks out the interference caused by these frequencies before it reaches the user application. Further, as the notch filter is internal to the sensor module, it eliminates the need for an engineer to design and implement an external notch filter. This feature removes an external notch filter, so the overall system is more efficient, more reliable and less costly.
Benefits of the integrated 50/60Hz Notch Filter include:
- Eliminate the noise from the power grid and AC devices before it reaches the sensing element
- Simplify product design with an integrated approach
- Speed time to market by not having to design and/or implement an external notch filter
- Lower overall system cost as an external notch filter is no longer required
A pressure switch is a mechanical or electronic device that is activated when a certain pressure threshold or set point is reached. These failsafe response components instruct the system to perform an action if a certain pressure threshold is met.
Types of Pressure Switches
Fixed Pressure Switches
As their name implies, fixed pressure switches have pre-set, non-changeable pressure thresholds that are set by the pressure switch manufacturer. The device maker receives the pressure switch already configured and cannot change values. Examples where fixed pressure switches are common are certain types of medical devices, such as ventilators.
Variable Pressure Switches
With variable pressure switches, the threshold value can be set either by the device maker or dynamically in the field. If it is controlled by the device maker, when they build their product they select certain resistor pairs that control the voltage input that determines the threshold. Once they build the product, the threshold value cannot be changed.
In cases where the threshold can be set in the field, this is typically done via software or a mechanical knob/switch. In this scenario, the pressure switch is usually not implemented as a safety feature. A good example is with air filters – where depending on the system implementation, the threshold value needs to be adjusted to account for any head loss in the flow stream.
Superior’s pressure switch changes state depending on the measured pressure being above or below a certain threshold. This can be used as a fast response failsafe feature for overpressure conditions, and to provide other simplified on/off system feedback. However, unlike other more common pressure switches, the Superior Sensor pressure switch includes three modes for setting threshold pressure, one fixed and two variable:
- Fixed mode: Superior Sensor Technology sets the threshold and provides the ‘ready for use’ configured sensor (with integrated pressure switch) to the device manufacturer.
- Variable mode 1: The device manufacturer can configure and set the proper thresholds at the time of product manufacturing.
- Variable mode 2: Pressure thresholds are field programmable via software, so the pressure switch can be ‘tuned’ after product manufacture depending on the use case.
Benefits of Superior’s integrated pressure switch include:
- Flexibility with 3 modes of operation
- Lower system cost as need for an external pressure switch is eliminated
- Smaller overall PCB footprint
- Improve the reliability of your product by eliminating external components
- Minimize system power and heat
- Simplify your product design
- Speed your time to market
Video Corner
HV Series Benefits Summary
HS Series Benefits Summary