Hydraulic tanks: When the smart tank lights up

Hydraulic tanks are certainly one of the most inconspicuous hydraulic components, but hardly any fluid system can do without them. A specialty at ARGO-HYTOS are the so-called hybrid tanks with integrated filter housing for mineral oil and environmentally friendly hydraulic fluids (HEES and HETG), which are produced as ready-to-install complete modules by rotational molding and injection molding from plastic.

Sensor technology on board
"We exhibited a hybrid tank with integrated sensor technology at this year's Hannover Messe at the special show "Intelligent Fluid and Drive Technology"," says Uli Seeger, Head of Product Management ARGO-HYTOS GMBH from Kraichtal-Menzingen. Animated LED bars visualize how the data stream flows from the tank into a controller. A cut-open tank demonstrates how easily sensor technology for oil condition monitoring can be integrated into the product. Three proven screw-in or immersion sensors are used: a level and temperature sensor, a wear sensor (OPCom FerroS) and an oil condition sensor (Lubcos H2O+). All three sensors are proven ARGO-HYTOS products that are already being installed in tanks today at the request of customers.


With sensor data fusion, the oil condition in sight
The topic of "networking sensor data": this is not just about forwarding data to higher-level systems, but above all about the clever interaction of several sensors. The keyword is sensor-data fusion. The focus is on merging data from different sensors to increase detection performance or to better classify data. Thanks to the use of three sensors in the tank, which record a wide variety of characteristic values such as temperature, wear (detection of ferromagnetic particles) and oil moisture, the user can observe and assess the oil condition holistically - with all "sensor senses".