V-Cone Flow Meter Proves Itself As Easy-To-Use, Economical Solution For Oil/Gas Applications
With thousands of units installed worldwide during the past 20 years, McCrometer’s V-Cone® Flow Meter has proven itself in a wide range of installations from the most challenging offshore oil/gas applications to refining and chemical plants, providing superior flow measurement, exceptional reliability, low cost installation, virtually no maintenance and long life.
Oil/gas process engineers will find the V-Cone Flow Meter provides a low-installed and low life-cycle cost solution to measuring liquids, gas or steam. It complies with the industry’s most stringent performance standards through superior engineering, materials and workmanship to the highest quality levels.
The process of selecting and sizing a V-Cone is as simple as reviewing a Configuration Sheet and utilizing McCrometer’s advanced V-Cone Sizing Software, which is the industry’s most exacting program. With the help of the company’s highly trained oil/gas industry application experts, the entire selection process takes only minutes for most standard oil/gas applications. With its highly flexible design, a wide range of custom V-Cone configurations is also available.
The V-Cone Flow Meter operates over a wide flow range of 10:1 with low head loss and supports line sizes from 0.5 to greater than 120 inches. Accuracy is +0.5%, with a repeatability of +0.1%. A comprehensive suite of testing is available to meet individual user requirements, including pressure, non-destructive testing (NDT) and calibration. The testing of the V-Cone conforms to the American Petroleum Institute’s API 22.2 Testing Protocol for differential pressure flow measurement devices.
The self-conditioning V-Cone Flow Meter is well suited for easy installation in all applications and is ideal where installation conditions are crowded, such as offshore platforms. It requires a pipe straight-run that is up to 70-percent less than other meters, resulting in significant real estate and installation cost savings that can actually exceed the cost of the instrument itself.
The V-Cone Flow Meter’s no-moving parts design provides built-in flow conditioning, which almost eliminates the upstream/downstream straight pipe runs required by nearly all flow meter technologies. Typical flow meter installations may require 10 to more than 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 accuracy.
In comparison to traditional DP instruments such as orifice plates and venturi tubes, the V-Cone Flow Meter’s design is inherently more accurate because the flow conditioning function is built into the basic instrument. The V-Cone conditions fluid flow to provide a stable flow profile that increases accuracy. It features a centrally-located cone inside a tube. The cone interacts with the fluid flow and reshapes the velocity profile to create a lower pressure region immediately downstream.
The pressure difference, which is exhibited between the static line pressure and the low pressure created downstream of the cone, is measured via two pressure sensing taps. One tap is placed slightly upstream of the cone and the other is located in the downstream face of the cone itself. The pressure difference is then incorporated into a derivation of the Bernoulli equation to determine the volumetric fluid flow rate.
