When mining coal using cutting mining machines, the cutting tool must be cooled and the resultant coal dust must be deposited in the wall to protect employees. This occurs by continually sprinkling with water, which is sprayed through nozzles onto the shearer arms and the shearers, as well as the cutting heads on the mining machines. The electromagnetic MID‑EX‑E small flow meter reliably monitors the volume flow and therefore guarantees safety-relevant continuous sprinkling. As a result, the application places extremely high requirements on the measuring device. As hazardous failures and malfunctions on the mining machine may pose a risk to persons, the environment and material assets, the machine operator must evaluate the risk using a risk analysis. The primary aim is to ensure that the machine can be operated safely. In doing so, functional safety plays a decisive role as part of the overall system safety.
The MID‑EX‑E small flow meter (not the CANopen version) is therefore suitable for use in safety-relevant machines where high levels of functional safety are required in accordance with EN 61508 (SIL 2) and high levels of machine safety are required in accordance with EN 13849 (PL d).

High-pressure pumps in wall-supply system injects hydraulic fluid into the wall. The hydraulic fluid is mixed from oil and water into an emulsion in the wall-supply system. In doing so, it is important that the emulsion does not contain too much oil for economic reasons. However, if insufficient oil is mixed in, the shield cylinders in the wall may rust. To ensure the correct mixing ratio, the water inlet must be monitored. The electromagnetic MID‑EX‑E small flow meter carries out this measurement task.

Due to the high levels of contamination and dirt in the water from underground mining, water treatment plants are installed to clean and desalinate the polluted water using filters and reverse osmosis. It can then be used to make water-oil emulsions for the wall-hydraulic supply, for example. The treatment plant is fully automatic. At the same time, the robust Kirchgaesser MID‑EX‑E small flow meter reliably monitors the inflowing and outflowing water to the filter unit and reverse-osmosis unit, without requiring any maintenance.