I am planning on working on a project to build a controller which will be used to detect the levels of water treatment chemical tanks and display them on a bar graph. then switch off the dosing pumps once the chemical tank level reaches completely low.
There are plenty of circuit diagrams on the internet to simply achieve that using DC voltages and op-amps. But applying DC voltages are not reliable and may cause electro-metal plating and the electrodes to dissolve. Then I came to know that LM1830 is designed to overcome that issue. Well, I'm curious about that and wanted to know really how this is done in industrial circuits. So I removed a Chinese industrial level control relay and grabbed their design as follows. (Please note that I have erased the brand name and model as it may go against the manufacturer's design rules.)
Now my questions are,
Why is the AC output directly after the transformer, is shorted with a capacitor, without that capacitor wouldn't the E3 probe deliver the AC voltage?
Here probe E3 supplies the voltage to the liquid and E1 & E2 receives it back. But the M7 diode in the receiving circuitry limits the current in one direction only. So the current through the liquid still remains DC. Is it correct?
The transformer appears to be 230/24 step down. So this amount of voltage applied to the liquid, isn't it potentially dangerous. As the higher the voltage is, its easier to dissolve the electrodes.
Is this mechanism technically safe to use in drinking water tanks?