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What’s the difference between P.S.I & BAR pressure?

As consumer in today’s world today, there’s a good chance you have enjoyed a bubbly, carbonated beverage at some point. These beverages contain a dissolved gas, carbon dioxide, which has been added into the solution at some point during processing. This gives the finished product effervescence, commonly referred to as fizz.

There are a handful of methods to accomplish carbonation, however in mass production, the most efficient way is to inject CO2 directly into your product. This is typically done at a cold temperature to and under high amounts of pressure. These conditions provide the best environment for the gas to be absorbed into the liquid. And to create this environment, a producer will almost surely us a pressure rated container.

If you research these containers a bit, you’ll find them referred to using Bars, and/or P.S.I. These are both measurements of pressure and although they are similar, NOT the same. I don’t mean they aren’t equivalent, which is also true, but how each measures pressure is different.

P.S.I. stands for Pounds per Square Inch and is “A unit of measurement of pressure, which gives the pressure as the one-pound force applied on an area of one square inch of a surface.” This measurement is used commonly because it is more easily understood, since it is a direct comparison to weight. POUNDS per square inch, meaning the pressure is measured by comparing the outward force to an amount of weight; something an average person can understand. And because of this, P.S.I. not only measures pressure, but also stress on the containment of pressure.

Bars of pressure refers to “a unit of measurement which gives the pressure as the force applied perpendicularly on a unit area of a surface." This is a clean measurement of force being applied directly (perpendicularly) outward on the containment of pressure. So, it does not measure the concise amount of pressure confined to a square inch, but rather the entire force being applied outward.

If we were to convert the measurements, 1 bar of pressure is equivalent to around 14.5 P.S.I. Because of this, pressures are often measured using Bars, simply because the larger numbers allow more room for errors when doing math and other conversations.

To summarize, both P.S.I. and Bar are units that measure pressure. The difference is that P.S.I. measures the pressure as if the force were being applied to a surface measuring one-square inch. Bars measure pressure as if the force were being applied outward to any given surface attempting to contain the pressure. Both can be used interchangeably; however, 1 bar is about 14.5 P.S.I., meaning bars of pressure can quickly add up when being measured in P.S.I. and the number’s being used will be smaller. Contact CSC

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