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DANIEL
MEASUREMENT
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APPLICATION Solve
NOTES Metering Problems
page 1
How Todays Ultrasonic Meter Diagnostics Solve Metering Problems Technical White Paper
www.daniel.com
1. ABSTRACT
built into todays electronics can identify problems that often may
not have been identified in the past. It primarily discusses fiscalquality, multi-path USMs and does not cover issues that may be
the same, the diagnostics for each manufacturer does vary. All
for entry into their company database for tracking over time.
trending of data.
2. INTRODUCTION
During the past several years there have been numerous papers
some of the basic designs that are used today. Figure 1 shows
pair
Although these features are very important, little has been written
design D in Figure 1.
AGA 10 [Ref 3] SOS vs. the meters reported SOS, and many
others.
This paper will go into more detail on all of the above features
and more. It is important to understand that the meters being
analyzed in this paper are of the chordal design, and therefore
some of the analysis would not apply to other designs.
Graphs shown in this paper are from Excel spreadsheets
and were automatically generated by Daniels CUI (Customer
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on previous logs.
If this meter was operating at 75 Bar, and then the pressure was
4.1 Gain
gains far greater than the others. The increase of all transducers
This meter had velocities that were typically around 12 m/s and
then the operation changed and the meter velocity approached
18 m/s, resulting in the increased gain on all paths. However,
Chord D indicated a significantly higher increase in the gain, and
then continued to increase while the other chords maintained a
relatively stable gain level.
Some may feel the meters accuracy could be affected with this
type of gain increase. In actuality as long as the transit times
are being measured correctly then there is virtually no impact
on accuracy. By trending gains this customer identified a meter
problem before failure, thus avoiding any possible downtime.
Figure 2 Gain Changes with Velocity
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until it reaches the upper limit of the velocity rating. Here the
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Chord D is running less than 100% while all others are at 100%.
value.
one might be alarmed to see the SNR for all chords around
1000 rather than the expected value of 2500 to 3000. However,
it is important to recognize that the SNR drops at higher meter
velocities.
too close and the pressure differential is too high. When this
control valves can swamp the signal to the point that the meter
becomes inoperative.
the SNR to be too low then action may be warranted. There are
itself.
several times in a row (as opposed to once only). The sum of the
occurs, the SNR values will drop. The magnitude of the SNR is
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shows the SNR values of a meter that has stacking turned on.
0.89) for the A and D chords, and about 104% (ratio = 1.04) for
chords is below 500, yet this meter was operating with 100%
that the outer chords are closer to the pipe wall, and thus the
values that exceed 2000. This is partly due to the length being
velocity of the gas there is less than the gas that is closer to
shorter and thus the gain is lower for these. With less gain
the center of the pipe. When the velocity falls below something
like 1 m/s, depending upon meter size and station design, the
velocity profile within the meter. The baseline log file may be
different than that in Figure 11. These were taken from a 16-
inch meter at the time of calibration. When one sees this type
of distortion in the velocity profile, it may be assumed that
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12-inch meter. This was based on the log file collected at the
time of calibration [Ref 5]. Customers have often asked what
impact partial blockage of a flow conditioner has on the meters
accuracy. This meter was used to show what happens not only
to the profile, but to quantify the change in accuracy.
The Profile Factor for this meter is 1.187. For the second test,
Factor.
removed.
meter didnt change by more than 0.2% from 1 m/s to 0.15 m/s
Again, a change in profile, particularly at low velocities, does
Figure 16 shows the velocity profile during the time the flow
same.
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and makes the assumption that there are no other changes like
flow conditioner blockage.
The next question is what was the impact on accuracy with this
distorted velocity profile? Figure 17 shows the result of the three
tests velocities and the impact on metering accuracy.
As can be seen the meter was affected by about +0.2% for all
flow rates. In this case the meter slightly over-registered with this
distorted profile. Later in this paper a more advanced diagnostic
feature will also show the meter has blockage, but for now one
can see the Profile Factor has indicated a significant change.
The Profile Factor, which is in blue, is about 1.208 for this period
of time (approximately 2 months).
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Figure 19 shows the chord velocity ratios for this clean meter
over the same period. Notice how the chord ratios remain very
stable over these 2 months.
Figure 20 shows a meter that has some change in the Profile
Factor over time. The Profile factor starts out at about 1.198 and
gradually increased to about 1.270 after about 9 months. After
the first 9 months the Profile Factor basically remains the same,
indicating additional contamination is probably not occurring.
This meter had been cleaned just prior to the collection of these
log files.
Figure 21 shows how the chord ratios for this dirty meter were
also changing over time. Of course one would expect this since
the Profile Factor is developed from all four chords.
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and clean.
blue line represents the meter clean and the piping still dirty. In
This test shows simply cleaning the meter body does not restore
of each chord.
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Looking at the SOS difference chart, shown in Figure 28,
shows how different this chords reading relative to the others.
This SOS difference is graphed at the same time as the graph
showing all the meters reported chord SOS values. Each graph
clearly shows a problem, but when the difference between the
chords is small, the SOS difference graph makes it easier to see
there is a problem.
If the meter is being subjected to significant levels of ultrasonic
noise from a control valve, prior to total failure of the meter
one might see an occasional pulse detection error. This is
also known as a peak switch. This may occur intermittently as
shown in Figure 29, or it may be a permanent switch that would
including the date and time it occurred. Once the SOS returns
to normal (something less than the 0.5% difference), the alarm
will clear.
When a meter is operated at lower velocities, typically less than
1 m/s, and there is a significant difference between the gas and
atmospheric temperature, heat transfer can occur. As the heat
transfer occurs, internal temperature gradients can develop.
When this happens the hotter gas inside the pipe rises to the
top. Since the speed of sound in the gas is relatively sensitive to
temperature, this will be seen as a SOS difference between the
chords. This is often called thermal stratification.
Figure 30 shows an example of a 16-inch meter at the calibration
lab. The temperature of the gas is quite a bit higher than the
ambient, so at lower velocities there is some stratification inside
the pipe. If the gas and ambient temperatures were the same,
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flow calibration.
This meter was calibrated to 0.15 and 0.3 m/s. Both error points
are virtually the same making it look as though only one data
point was taken. The error difference between the 0.15 and 0.3
m/s is less than 0.03%. Thus, even with the chord velocities
looking very skewed at the time of flow calibration, as shown
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un-detected.
chords.
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The problem with doing this only at the time of inspection is that
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ensure real-time meter station health and not just verify when
this on a real-time basis and also store on the hourly log files.
This example shows how the SOS, in red, moves closer to the
CONCLUSIONS
During the past several years the industry has learned a lot
Figure 42 Actual SOS vs. AGA 10 SOS
meters reported SOS (in blue). The cause of this is most likely
and SOS have helped the industry monitor the USM. These 5
computed SOS trails the meters SOS one can see the impact
timely computation.
One major benefit to the USM is that it provides information
Figure 43 shows another example of how the meters SOS
sound at the time identified in Figure 43 with the red arrow, there
to compute over a period of time, say one hour. In this way the
not have the same feature set. Thus, having internal advanced
diagnostics makes it much easier for the end user as it does not
Generally if the computed AGA 10 SOS does not agree with the
As the industry learns more about the USM, and the operation of
meters reported SOS, more often than not the problem is with
6. REFERENCES
1. AGA Report No. 9, Measurement of Gas by Multipath
Ultrasonic Meters, June 1998, American Gas Association,
1515 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22209
2. John Lansing, Basics of Ultrasonic Flow Meters, American
School of Gas Measurement Technology, 2000, Houston,
Texas
3. AGA Report No 10, Speed of Sound in Natural Gas and
Other Related Hydrocarbon Gases, July 2002, American
Gas Association, 1515 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA
22209
4. BSI 7965:2000, Guide to the Selection, Installation,
Operation & Calibration of Transit Time Ultrasonic
Flowmeters for Industrial Gas Applications
5. Larry Garner & Joel Clancy, Ultrasonic Meter Performance
Flow Calibration Results CEESI Iowa Inspection Tees
vs. Elbows, June 2004, Estes Park, CO
6. John Lansing, Dirty vs. Clean Ultrasonic Flow Meter
Performance, North Sea Flow Measurement Conference,
October 2004, St. Andrews, Scotland
7. John Lansing, Dirty vs. Clean Ultrasonic Flow Meter
Performance, AGA Operations Conference, 2002, Chicago,
IL
8. John Stuart, Rick Wilsack, Re-Calibration of a 3-Year Old,
Dirty, Ultrasonic Meter, AGA Operations Conference, 2001,
Dallas, Texas
9. James N. Witte, Ultrasonic Gas Meters from Flow Lab to
Field: A Case Study, AGA Operations Conference, 2002,
Chicago, IL
10. Klaus Zanker, Diagnostic Ability of the Daniel Four-Path
Ultrasonic Flow Meter, Southeast Asia Flow Measurement
Workshop, 2003, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
11. Klaus Zanker, The Effects of Reynolds Number, Wall
Roughness, and Profile Asymmetry on Single and MultiPath Ultrasonic
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