A. Zeghloul et al.

Materials and Biomaterials Science 04 (2021) 086–092 86

Mater. Biomater. Sci. 04 (2021) 086–092

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ORIGINAL PAPER

Design and construction of a turbine flowmeter based on the Hall effect to

measure volumetric air flow rate
Ammar Zeghloul , Abdelwahid Azzi a, Nabil Ghendour a
a,b*

a
University of Sciences and Technology Houari Boumediene (USTHB), FGMGP/LTPMP, Bab Ezzouar, 16111, Algiers, Algeria.
b
Polytechnic National School, BP 182, El Harrach, Algiers 16200, Algeria.

ARTICLE INFO A BST RACT

Article history: In the current work, details about the design, setting up, and function analysis of a turbine
Received: 21 February 2021 flow meter for volumetric air flow rate measurement have been presented. When the fluid
Revised: 22 Mars 2021
flows through the turbine, a quantity of kinetic energy is transferred from the fluid to the
Accepted: 28 April 2021
Published: 15 June 2021 turbine blades causing the turbine rotating. The meter was equipped with a hall effect sen-
sor SS406S to detect the magnetic field change of the rotating magnet that is fixed with
the turbine. The sensor output signal was amplified and acquired by the Arduino microcon-
Keywords: troller, and the pulse frequency was subsequently determined. The latter is proportional
Turbine flow meter to the turbine’s rotation speed. By calibrating the turbine flow meter, i.e., giving a mathe-
Flow rate matical function that relates the volumetric flow rate to the output frequency signal, the
Flow measurements instantaneous flow rate can be provided in both forms; data acquisition in excel sheet and
Transmitter data display in a digital indicator. The proposed flow meter's performance testing shows
that the obtained results are very close to those obtained by the rotameter flow meter,
which is used in the calibration process.
© 2021 mbmscience.com. All rights reserved.

Introduction
The flow rate is the amount of fluid (expressed in The work of Caldas et al. [1] describes and gives all aspects
mass or volume) that passes through a pipe cross-section in of the design and construction of a Hall effect turbine flow
every unit of time. Accurate flow measurement is an essential matter to measure the lithium bromide solution (LiBr) in an
process for the industry on both quantitative and economic absorption cooling system. The body of the proposed flow
sides. Various flowmeters are currently used in the industry. meter was manufactured with stainless steel and PVC mate-
They are traditionally classified according to the physical prin- rials and the turbine was made in ABS polymer with the help
ciple on which they operate. of a 3D printer. The other fundamental components of their
The turbine flow meters were extensively used for the flow proposed flow meter were a Hall effect sensor W1305347, a
rate measurement in broad industrial applications due to sim- microcontroller, and an LCD display. They used an ultrasonic
plicity, measurement efficiency, and low cost of these meters. flow meter to validate the performance of the manufactured
The hall effect sensor was successfully and widely exploited flow meter. The comparative results between the two flow
in the turbine flow meters for the turbine speed measure- meters showed an error of less than 4%.
ment. Discovered by Edwin Herbert Hall in 1849, the wor- Wang and Baker [2] discussed the latest innovative develop-
king principle of the Hall effect is based on making an elec- ments and applications of the Coriolis flowmeter. Their study
tric current flow along a semiconductor in the presence of a highlighted the effect of the operating conditions such as
magnetic field. The electrons are deflected by the magnetic the compressibility effect, the velocity profile, and the tem-
field's effect, giving a perpendicular voltage to the current perature on the measurement’s accuracy. Venugopal et al. [3]
and the magnetic field. The turbine flow meter explores this reviewed various aspects and designs of a vortex flow meter.
physical phenomenon. A magnet is installed on the turbine, They suggested to use in the design of the vortex flowmeter
which generates pulses at each passage of the turbine fins [1]. an improved vortex shedder shape such as a cylinder with slit
The volumetric flow rate can be obtained by measuring the or cylinder with a concave rear face instead of circular cylin-
pulse frequency, which is proportional to the turbine speed der form.
rotating. In the work of López-Martín and Valenzuela [4], a comparison
has been made between three flow meters. Two of them were
* Corresponding author: Ammar Zeghloul
[email protected] Vortex flow meters (Endress Prowirl 70 and Yokogawa Digital
Yewflo), and the third one is an Emerson Elite Coriolis flow

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87 A. Zeghloul et al. Materials and Biomaterials Science 04 (2021) 086–092

meter which is used as a reference to investigate the perfor- Effect of the concentration on the formed amount of MnO₂
mance of the two Vortex flow meters. The tests were carried Figure 2 shows the design and dimensions of the tur-
out in a solar collector test facility with a silicone thermal oil bine presented in this work. It was made of PVC materials. A
working fluid and high-temperature conditions from 140°C to magnet was installed and fixed at the top of the turbine to
340°C. The comparison of the three flow meter measurement ensure the rotation of the magnet with the turbine. When the
results showed a maximum error of 2.5%. turbine starts moving, it generates a rotating magnetic field
This work's primary goal is to design and construct a turbine with respect to the sensor. In order to increase the sensitivity
flow meter based on the Hall effect principle, which is ca- of the flow meter, the magnet has been chosen to have six
pable of providing and acquiring the air mass flow rate and states in a complete 360º turn, i.e., three high states of the
the temperature data inside a 1/2-inch pipe diameter. Moreo- south pole and three low states of the north poles.
ver, the performance of the proposed flow meter is checked
and discussed.

Results and discussions

Flow meter design
Figure 1 shows the set of components that constitute
the turbine flowmeter. The main component of the flowmeter
is the turbine (3), which is rotated by the effect of the fluid's
dynamic (air), that is exerted on the turbine blades. Compo-
nent (2) is a shaft in which the turbine is mounted and rota-
ted. A coaxial positioning of the shaft (2) with the turbine (3)
ensures a stable rotating of the turbine and thus more accu-
rate flow rate measurement. Component (4) is the shell of the
meter. It represents the turbine/shaft container and exposes
the inlet and outlet of the fluid flow. Part (1) is the cover of
the flow meter, which incorporates an electronic card that
measures the pulse frequency and temperature of the fluid.

The cover of the

turbine flow meter

The shaft of the

flow meter

The turbine

The shell of the

flow meter

Fig. 1. Turbine flow meter assembly. Fig. 2. The dimensions and design of the proposed turbine.

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A. Zeghloul et al. Materials and Biomaterials Science 04 (2021) 086–092 88

Fig. 3. The electric circuit including the two sensors, HONEYWELL SS406S (460S) and LM 35.

Electronic part Figure 5 represents the electronic circuit's schema-

A high-sensitivity digital Hall-effect sensor is activa- tic diagram that is regrouping the electronic components of
ted when it approaches the magnetic poles. It maintains its the power supply, the ATmega328 Arduino Nano Cards, and
state by suppressing the magnetic field, which will be changed the LCD display (16*2). The Sprint Layout software has been
when the opposite pole is applied. In our work, Hall effect used to draw this electronic circuit.
sensor SS406S from HONEYWELL company has been used.
The sensor output will be pulsed in two states, ON and OFF.
The Hall effect sensor must be encapsulated in the turbine in
order to be close to the magnet to sense its pole change. On
the other hand, the temperature sensor will also take place in
the turbine to measure the passing air temperature.
To power supply the electronic circuit, it is necessary to use a
voltage regulator. Therefore, The LM7805 regulator was used
to generate the required voltage for the circuit supply, which
is 5volts. Two capacitors have been added to eliminate oscilla-
tions and ensure a stable output DC voltage. Moreover, input
voltage higher than 7 volts is recommended to improve the
voltage regulation. A schematic diagram of the supply circuit Fig. 5. The printed circuit board that gathers the power supply's
is shown in figure 4. electronic components, the Arduino card, and the LCD display.

Figure 6 shows the achieved electronic circuit and the

necessary electrical connections for the power supply, the
LCD display, and the Arduino card. All the electronic parts
are grouped in a rigid box to ensure the flow meter and the
associated electronic circuit mobility. The choice of the Ar-
duino ATmega328 microcontroller is motivated by its versati-
lity, small size ("18×45 mm" ), low cost, and the possibility of
integration as an embedded system. Moreover, the Arduino’s
ATmega328 version has a power supply varied between 7 to
12 Volts with a linear voltage regulator of 5 Volts, 22 digital
inputs and outputs, and a 16 MHz crystal oscillator.
The Hall-effect sensor has a digital output in the form of
a square wave signal, and the LM35 has an analog output.
Fig. 4. Power supply circuit. These two signals are then related to the microcontroller Ar-
duino Nano ATmega328.

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89 A. Zeghloul et al. Materials and Biomaterials Science 04 (2021) 086–092

Fig. 7. Pin connection of the two sensors.

Calibration of the flow meter

The flow meter calibration is a required step before
the use of the device in the actual measurement. In the pre-
sent work, the calibration consists of determination the rela-
tionship between the Hall sensor's measured frequency and
the corresponding flow rate values. The turbine flow meters
are sensitive to viscosity. Therefore, it is essential to calibrate
the flowmeter using the same fluid, pressure, and tempera-
ture conditions in which the meter will operate. In our case,
the selected fluid is the air, and the working pressure is near
the atmosphere. At the same time, the working temperature is
the ambient which ranged around 25°C.

Calibration experimental setup and methodology

The calibration of the flow meter was carried out in
the Laboratory of Multiphase Flows and Porous Media of the
University of Sciences and Technology Houari Boumediene,
Algiers. Figure 9 shows the experimental apparatus used for
Fig. 6. Photo of the power supply circuit, Arduino Nano Cards the flow meter calibration. It consists of a compressor used
ATmega328, and LCD display 16 x 2. to generate compressed air. The latter passes through a pres-
sure regulator, reducing the air pressure to a value close to the
The output signals from the Hall effect sensor and the tempe- atmosphere. Using flexible pipes, the air flowrate has been
rature sensor are connected to Arduino's pin, as represented connected to both the reference calibration instrument and
in Figure 6. The digital signal from the 406S sensor is used the turbine flow meter, which are mounted in series. The refe-
to read the output pulses from the rotating turbine. When rence instrument used to calibrate the turbine flow meter was
Arduino detects the pulse, it immediately triggers a function a calibrated rotameter series 1200 with a maximum uncer-
that counts the total number of the detected pulses. The mea- tainty of 2%, according to the manufacturer. This rotameter
surement is repeated every 1 second. To measure the tempe- has been successfully used in many previous works [5]–[10]
rature, the LM35 sensor is connected to the analog input A0 to control the airflow rate. The flow rate calibration condi-
of Arduino. The latter reads the analog data and, at the same tions were varied with the flow meter valve from 0 to 10 l/
time, converts it to digital data that will be displayed. min with a step of 0.5 l/m for each test. An oscilloscope was
The open-source PLXDAQ software has been chosen for the also used in parallel with the Arduino processing circuit to
data acquisition of the flow rate and the temperature time measure the pulse frequency by determining the period of the
series. PLX-DAQ is a macro developed by the Parallax com- signal. To ensure the maximum measuring accuracy, the cali-
pany, allowing microcontrollers to send data to an excel sheet. bration of the flowmeter has been repeated three times. Table
1 shows the obtained calibration results. A good accordance
was found between the frequency measured by the Arduino
processing circuit and those obtained from the oscilloscope.
In figure 10, the mass flow rate data has been plotted
against the measured frequency from the oscilloscope and the
Arduino’s card. From this figure, one can see that both expe-
rimental results from the oscilloscope and the Arduino’s card
are close to each other. In addition, the statistical analysis of
the regression coefficient shows that the linear curve fits well
with the experimental calibration results. The mathematical
equation obtained from the linear curve is expressed as fol-
low:
Q [L/min] = 0.0488 × Fr [Hz ] (1)
Fig. 8. Photo of the power supply circuit, Arduino Nano Cards
ATmega328, and LCD display 16 x 2.

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A. Zeghloul et al. Materials and Biomaterials Science 04 (2021) 086–092 90

Q is the total masse flow rate in (l/min), and Fr is the frequen- Table 1. The turbine flow meter calibration results.
cy (Hz). This mathematical equation is integrated to the Ar- Flow rate Frequency [Hz] Oscilloscope
duino’s program to display the correct flow rate measurement
values. [L/M] Test 1 Test 2 Test 3 Frequency [Hz]
1 24 23 24 26.2
1.5 39 38 37 37.03
2 47 46 47 45.45
2.5 58 59 58 58.8
3 65 66 65 69.4
3.5 75 75 75 75.7
4 83 83 83 83.3
4.5 93 93 93 96.3
5 102 102 102 104.1
5.5 110 110 110 113.6
6 121 121 120 121.9
6.5 131 130 130 131.5
7 142 142 142 142.9
7.5 151 151 151 151.5
8 162 163 162 161.2
8.5 172 172 172 174.2
9 184 184 184 185.1
9.5 197 197 196 192.3
10 209 208 209 208.3

Test and analysis of the turbine flow meter

Figure 11 shows the final product version of the tur-
bine flow meter. As we can see from this figure, frequency,
masse flow rate, and temperature can be collected directly
from the LCD monitor. The time series of these physical para-
meters could also be acquired in an excel datasheet.
Fig. 9. Photo of the testing apparatus used for the flow meter
calibration.

Fig. 11. The finished version of the turbine flow meter.

To validate the turbine flow meter's performance, it was as-

Fig. 10. The calibration equation of the turbine flow meter sessed for different masse flow rates controlled by the same

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91 A. Zeghloul et al. Materials and Biomaterials Science 04 (2021) 086–092

Table 2. The deviation of the acquired signal.

Rotameter 1 [L/min] 2 [L/min] 3 [L/min] 5 [L/min] 7 [L/min] 9 [L/min]

Mean 0.990 2.097 2.934 4.895 6.980 8.921
Minimum 0.966 1.972 2.830 4.850 6.878 8.764
Maximum 1.020 2.124 3.172 5.173 7.036 9.116
Standard deviation 0.027 0.040 0.073 0.070 0.044 0.058

rotameter used in the calibration process. Figure 12 exhibits reliability showed a similar result to those taken by a rotame-
some examples of the acquired masse flow rate time series ter. Finally, the objective of this work has been achieved and
for a period of 40 seconds. From this figure, we can see that the results obtained are very satisfactory.
the acquired signals show the exact values of the masse flow
rate as those fixed by the rotameter. However, some fluctua- References
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Conflicts of interest
Authors declare no conflict of interests.

Notes
The authors declare no competing financial interest.

&
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of
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How to cite this article

A. Zeghloul, A. Azzi , N.Ghendour. Design and construction
of a turbine flowmeter based on the Hall effect to measure
volumetric air flow rate. Materials and Biomaterials Science
04 (2021) 086-092.

© Materials and Biomaterials Science