CASE STUDY | FUSION-H₂ – Breakthrough Hydrogen Flow Sensor
Revolutionizing hydrogen measurement with advanced ultrasonic technology built with future-proof lead-free piezomaterials.
Revolutionizing hydrogen measurement with advanced ultrasonic technology built with future-proof lead-free piezomaterials.
As new regulations phase out the use of lead in piezoelectric materials, Ionix is leading the way with an innovative, sustainable alternative. We’ve developed lead-free materials and sensors for extreme environments that operate across a wide temperature range without compromising sensitivity, providing a future-ready solution that maintains performance, resilience, and compatibility with existing systems. This breakthrough offers a sustainable path forward, ensuring compliance, continuity, and uncompromised performance in challenging environments.
Ionix awarded UK government funding to develop ultrasonic meter designed to measure hydrogen flow.
Ionix HPZ enables gas flow metering at temperatures exceeding 400°C, utilising the same cabling technology, electronics, and software, significantly extending market reach for OEM manufacturers of flow systems. With plug-and-play compatibility for PZT, Ionix HPZ maintains the same physics and physical form as PZT, ensuring seamless integration. This allows OEMs to easily adopt Ionix HPZ without needing to alter their existing systems.
Integrating Ionix’s HotSense flare gas transducers provided frequent, consistent, and high-quality methane gas velocity data across a wide temperature range (-200 to +400 °C), enabling our partner to expand market penetration into chemical processing and refining. By using our HotSense ultrasonic technology, our partner achieved rapid market entry without significant in-house product development costs, launching a product within eight months. HotSense, a certified intrinsically safe ultrasonic platform, optimised system certification for safe, easy integration into existing electronics, and ensured worldwide operation, delivering accuracy better than ±1% with a high turn-down ratio.
Ionix’s flow meter OEM expands product offering to target high-value, low-competition, high-temperature flow metering applications with our HPZ piezoceramic-powered HotSense™ ultrasonic platform. This initiative includes the accelerated development and production of clamp-on ultrasonic transducers, reducing the product development cycle by threefold. A flow OEM partner outsourced production to Ionix to utilise our high-temperature assembly expertise, economies of scale, and adherence to ISO 9001 and ATEX/IECEx quality standards.
Ionix delivered a steam flow Lamb wave transducer operating at up to 220°C (15 barg), ensuring high accuracy and compact size. The technique accurately measures flow speed in up to 90% dry steam, saving their partner development time and costs, and accelerating market entry. This advanced technology enhances efficiency, reduces costs, and provides a competitive edge.
A novel solution was sought by a leading high-performance automotive manufacturer to monitor the speed and position of the camshaft, crankshaft, gear box and other positions of interest up and down the drive train, in a package which would enable a step change in physical size requirements for a sensor. Explore this latest case study to find out more.
There are many key attributes to Ionix HPZ ceramic. These features are what make HPZ so unique and something that can easily enhance your piezoceramic products. Below are all the key features that we think make Ionix HPZ a ceramic that can optimise your applications.
Ionix has begun the development of the next generation of lead free piezoceramic materials to address the challenge of potential future RoHS lead exemption reviews banning the use of lead in a wider range of applications. There are currently no suitable lead-free piezoelectric materials for many critical devices and as such now is the time to explore alternative solutions.