Thermocouple primary element
TE inside an instrument circle is the standard tag for a thermocouple primary element. Thermocouples cover the highest temperature range in process work, especially above 600 °C where RTDs cannot survive.
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How it’s drawn.
An instrument circle carrying TE, the tag for a temperature element, with the loop number below. On the drawing it sits at the process connection, usually inside a thermowell shown at the pipe or vessel wall. A line runs from the TE bubble to its transmitter or indicator, so the sensing element and its readout are separate symbols joined by a signal line. The bubble does not say which thermocouple type it is. That lives on the datasheet.
Typical usage.
Furnace skin temperature, FCCU riser cyclone temperature, kiln burning zone, recovery boiler bed. Type J, iron-constantan, Type K, chromel-alumel, and Type T, copper-constantan cover most service ranges.
Telling it apart.
- TE and TT are not the same symbol. TE is the sensing element at the process. TT is the transmitter that turns it into a signal.
- A thermocouple and an RTD share the TE tag and the same bubble. The type is read from the datasheet or a note, not the symbol.
- The bracket at the pipe is the thermowell, the pocket the element drops into, not the sensor itself.