Development of Gas Meter based on MEMS Thermal Flow Sensor

gas metering plays an important role in industrial and custom area. The existing gas meters are mainly developed on the basis of diaphragm flow measurement principle, which has the disadvantages that the starting flow rate is high, metering cannot indicate the calorific value directly, and measurement is susceptible to temperature and pressure. Therefore, many previous studies have demonstrated the successful application of MEMS thermal flow measurement with low starting flow rate and wide range ratio, which show the potential application on the field of thermal mass metering. This paper introduces a gas meter based on MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) thermal flow measurement. The structure and working principle of the gas meter are presented. The thermal flow sensor is used to measure the mass flow. The integration of thermal sensor and gas channel has been finished. The performance of the gas meter is measured on sonic nozzle test platform. The experimental results show that the relative measurement error is less that 1.5%.