APPLICATIONS OF ULTRASONIC FLOW METERS IN THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY |
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| Josaphat Dias da Mata, Ricardo A. T. Pessanha, Roberto Guedes, Gualton Manhães, Hildebrando Pinho Filho |
- Abstract:
- With the recent advances in electronics, the ultrasonic flow measurement technology was the one with the greatest development, allowing a wider use of these flow meters in various applications in the petroleum industry.
The measurement of gas and oil at the inlet (import) and outlet (transfer) points, among other internal applications on an oil production platform, is essential for the volume balance and a good control of several properties of the fluid to be transferred.
A critical point in this balance is the calculation of the flared gas volume. Ultrasonic technology is able to do it, even considering critical flow rate conditions, big diameters, low pressures and huge turn-down, thus permitting a better process control.
Some types of multibeam ultrasonic flow meters for liquids present very low uncertainty, allowing their use as a reference (calibration) flow meter. Due to this feature, this type of meter presents great advantages in applications such as custody transfer, tanker offloading, transfer lines with high flow rates, etc.
It should be highlighted that the ultrasonic flow meters have no intrusive moving parts, therefore minimizing the head loss. This characteristic confers an additional benefit to the flow meter, so that it needs less frequent maintenance, if compared to the traditional mechanical flow meters, such as positive displacement and turbine flow meters.
The objective of this paper is to present some oil and gas applications of ultrasonic flow meters, which have generated advances in operational control, reliability in flow measurement, besides an updating of this new metrological scenario in Brazilian oil sector. - Download:
- IMEKO-TC9-2000-078.pdf
- DOI:
- -
- Event details
- IMEKO TC:
- TC9
- Event name:
- FLOMEKO 2000
- Title:
- 10th Conference on Flow Measurement
- Place:
- Salvador, Bahia, BRAZIL
- Time:
- 04 June 2000 - 08 June 2000