Rugged V-Cone Flow Meter Ideal For Gritty Oil Sands Separation Processes
October 3, 2016
Ideal for High-Temperature, High-Pressure Liquid, Natural Gas or Steam Service
Oil Sands process engineers looking for a rugged all-purpose flow meter that delivers high accuracy measurement in dirty liquid, natural gas or steam media will find the versatile V-Cone® Flow Meter from McCrometer is the right fit for extreme process environments.
Extracting oil from tar sands, which include a combination of crude bitumen (a semi-solid form of crude oil), silica sand and clay minerals, requires three processes -- extraction, separation and upgrading. The tar sands are typically mined from open pits and sent to a plant, where a hot water process and agitation are used to separate bitumen droplets that are later upgraded into synthetic oil.
Other alternative oil sands processes inject heated steam directly into the sand for the purpose of separation where bitumen deposits are deep below the surface. No matter the process, large amounts of water and energy are required for heating and pumping purposes. Flow meters that can accurately and reliably measure liquids, natural gas and steam play an important role in controlling and optimizing these processes to produce oil with the highest efficiency.
McCrometer’s V-Cone Flow Meter provides a high accuracy, dependable flow measurement solution for oil sands production and refining in all media. It operates in the most demanding conditions -- including dirty flows, high temperatures and high pressures with superior accuracy of +0.5% of flow rate and repeatability of +0.1%.
The precision V-Cone’s unique no-moving parts design provides built-in flow conditioning, which also nearly eliminates the upstream / downstream straight pipe runs required by nearly all other flow meter technologies. Typical flow meter installations require 10 to 40 straight pipe diameters upstream from the meter and 5 or more straight pipe diameters downstream to eliminate the effects of swirl and other pipeline disturbances caused by valves or elbows that negatively affect measurement accuracy.
The space-saving V-Cone reduces typical flow meter straight pipe run requirements by up to 70 percent or more and needs only 0-3 straight pipe diameters upstream and 0-1 downstream to operate effectively. It fits in crowded separation plant layouts as well as in refineries, while also reducing pipe material costs and installation labor costs dramatically.
The versatile V-Cone operates over a wide flow range of 10:1 and supports line sizes from 0.5 to 120 inches. Oil sands process engineers can rely on the V-Cone Flow Meter for long life and low cost of ownership because it requires virtually no recalibration or maintenance over an exceptionally long life.
McCrometer’s versatile V-Cone Flow Meter is compatible with the demanding standards set by the oil/gas production, delivery and refining industry. The testing of the V-Cone Flow Meter now conforms to the American Petroleum Institute’s API 22.2 Testing Protocol for differential pressure flow measurement devices.
