The trend towards miniaturization in flow solutions

Miniaturization is a trend you see in our daily life. The tiny house movement is something very popular at this moment, people choosing to downsize the space they live in by moving to a tiny house with an average space of 100-400 square feet. But also in industry miniaturization is a hot item. Mass flow meters and pressure controllers with minimal footprint fit this trend.

Footprint reduction

Having worked in both the Life Sciences and Analytical industries I am sympathetic to the ever increasing demands for small foot prints and faster instruments. It has been a continuing trend for many years that lab real-estate has become more and more expensive; this led to a drive for footprint reduction of instruments. You had to make sure that size didn’t make you expensive in bench space.

One of the drivers behind this process was the NeSSI system initiative (New Sampling/Sensor Initiative), sponsored by the Centre for Process Analysis and Control. The aim was to reduce the overall costs of engineering, installing and maintaining chemical process analytical systems. In the NeSSI system, mass flow meters and pressure controllers needed a standard footprint of 1.5’’.