While oil and gas have generally always been regarded as precious commodities, the current climate of high energy prices and more stringent fiscal accounting standards has made the need to accurately measure production values all the more critical. Emerson Process Management, a leading provider of automation solutions to the oil and gas industry, is addressing this need with its new family of Daniel Series 3800 liquid ultrasonic flowmeters, which the company says are the first in the industry to use digital intelligence to deliver diagnostics that help users detect and troubleshoot maintenance problems.
The Daniel Model 3804 is the first unit in the company’s smart liquid ultrasonic flowmeter family.
The company states that it is now ready to expand its technology and expertise in high performance oil and gas fiscal metering to liquid ultrasonic metering. The first liquid ultrasonic meter in the series is the Model 3804, which is designed for use in custody transfer, allocation measurement, and check metering applications in areas such as offshore platforms, crude and refined product pipelines, and marketing terminals.
The Daniel Model 3804 ultrasonic meter can measure a wide range of fluids including crude oil, distillate fuels, and petrochemicals with a +/- 0.15% accuracy over a 10:1 flow range. The meters feature Emerson’s state-of-the-art transducer design that includes a glass matching layer for superior acoustical coupling and waveform detection, enabling for more exact measurements.
Emerson employed extensive field trials and customer feedback to devise the new meter, which is also capable of internet monitoring to give users the benefit of remotely observing information such as flow profiles and transducer status to help in detecting and troubleshooting any erroneous measurements.
The Daniel Model 3804 liquid ultrasonic meter works by using four pairs of integrally-mounted transducers that allow the meter to maintain high accuracy over widely varying pipeline conditions, including changes in fluids. The meter is designed for minimal maintenance.
Emerson states that the entire 3800 series of meters, which range in size from 4 to 12-in. line sizes in 150 to 900 ANSI classes, use the same components, which therefore keeps inventory costs low. The non-wetted, intrinsically safe transducers can be replaced during operation in a matter of minutes, even in hazardous environments, without the need to empty or depressurize the meter.
Users will be able to configure the meter using Emerson’s Daniel Customer Ultrasonic Interface (CUI), a Windows-based software application. The interface also allows for viewing of flow profiles, recording log files, trending data, and troubleshooting installation problems with advanced diagnostic data.
These meters also have Ethernet compatibility, which allows multiple users to connect remotely to the meter and obtain real-time data without the need to go into the field. In a matter of minutes, users can download a year’s worth of archive logs stored in the meter.
“The new Daniel ultrasonic meter family extends our digital field intelligence initiatives to today’s high growth liquid ultrasonic fiscal metering applications,” says John Berra, president of Emerson Process Management.
For more information about the Daniel Series 3800 Liquid Ultrasonic Flow Meter, visit Emerson’s Daniel website atwww.Daniel.com.
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