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Fourth Meeting
of FRWG to be held on June 20, 2019
The Fourth Meeting
of the Flow Recalibration Working Group (FRWG) will be at the CEESI North
American Custody Transfer Conference in Austin, Texas on June 20, 2019. This
meeting will be held at the conclusion of the North American Custody Transfer
Measurement Conference (NACTMC 2019), organized by Colorado Engineering
Experiment Station Inc. (CEESI). The conference will be held from June 18 - 20,
2019, at the following location:
Hyatt Regency
Austin
208 Barton Springs
Road
Austin, TX 78704
512-477-1234
For more details
on the conference, go to www.ceesi.com.
You can make hotel reservations through the CEESI website.
The conference is
scheduled to conclude at noon on June 20, 2019. The FRWG meeting will take place
in the main conference hall from 12:30 - 2:00 pm. Some people may have to leave
early due to flight schedules, so we would like to get started soon after the
conclusion of the conference; hence the 12:30 pm starting time.
An agenda will be
sent to FRWG members. We plan to discuss the results of our end-user survey on
flowmeter recalibration, and also the status of our whitepapers on flowmeter
recalibration frequency, among other topics.
Flow
Research has prepared a summary of the results of the 25 questionnaire responses
we have received, complete with comments and charts. This survey shows some very
interesting results about the reasons why people decide to recalibrate their
flowmeters, what percent send them to an outside flowlab, and how often they
recalibrate. It also shows that some people choose self-verification or onsite
calibration as an alternative. We will discuss these results.
We
will also discuss the structure of our proposed whitepaper on flowmeter
calibration. If you are planning to attend, please think about the structure and
the topics that need to be addressed.
Can You Help
in this Effort?
If you are an
end-user or a manufacturer involved in calibration or recalibration of
flowmeters, you can help us by taking the survey below. Simply click on the WORD
or PDF version of our end-user survey and fill it out. Please send the results
to Jesse Yoder at jesse@flowresearch.com. Your input will make a
difference!
FRWG is Conducting a
Flowmeter Recalibration Survey: Your Input is Needed!
Please take our flowmeter recalibration survey! FRWG
is conducting a survey of decision-makers who need to determine when to have
their flowmeters recalibrated. We need your input! Our goal is to
determine criteria to determine when flowmeters of different types need to be
recalibrated. We will then work to have these criteria adopted as an
industry standard.
Our first step is to find out what people are doing now,
including how often and why they have their flowmeters recalibrated. Our
scope is worldwide, as we believe that similar considerations apply regardless
of region. So far as we know, this is the first attempt by any group to
establish such a standard.
You can participate by filling out the following
survey: If you do, we will send you more information on our ongoing
activities, and on how you can become more involved. For your convenience,
we have posted both a WORD and a PDF version of the survey.
Flowmeter
Recalibration Survey (WORD Version)
Flowmeter
Recalibration Survey (PDF Version)
Please return your completed survey to jesse@flowresearch.com,
or to the address on the back of the survey form. Thank you for your participation!
See below for a list of FRWG members and a history of the
organization, including how and why it was formed.
Second Meeting of FRWG held on June 21, 2017
We
held our second meeting of the Flow Recalibration Working Group (FRWG) at the CEESI North American Custody
Transfer Conference in San Antonio, Texas that was held from June 19-21,
2017.
We met on June 21 at the conclusion of the
conference.
The
main focus of this meeting was the end-user survey that we decided to
conduct at our initial meeting. Flow
Research has created a draft of the end-user survey that has been circulated to
working group members.
At this meeting we agreed to finalize the end-user survey, and then begin to
administer it. Members agreed to provide the names of 5-10 end-users who
could potentially complete the survey.
The subject of providing funding for our efforts
was discussed, but we agreed to wait until completing the end-user survey to
pursue this idea.
We aim to get the end-user survey underway at the
beginning of 2018. Flow Research will be circulating the draft survey
towards the end of 2017 so that we can begin the survey early in 2018. Our
hope is to have some solid results by the time of our third meeting at the CEESI
Custody Transfer conference in June 2018.
In the meantime, we have had some new members join
our working group. The list of FRWG members appears below. I
would especially like to welcome Pankaj Gupta (Gail), Tom Ballard (Circor), Tom
Stonehouse (Baker Hughes-GE), and Aguko Willis (Kenya Bureau of Standards). Our
Working Group has a truly international reach.
Third Meeting
of FRWG held on June 14, 2018
On
June 14, 2018, the Flow Recalibration Working Group (FRWG) held its third
meeting. The Working Group has been
meeting for the past several years at the CEESI Custody Transfer Conference,
held annually in June.
The group began by reviewing
the activities of the past year. In
our 2017 meeting, we had agreed to finalize the enduser questionnaire that was
circulated to members prior to the 2017 meeting.
Flow Research received comments on this survey during the second half of
2017. On February 9, 2018, and again
on February 24, Flow Research sent out a reminder to FRWG members to review the
questionnaire prior to its being sent out. We
received some additional comments after these reminders.
Finally, on March 18, 2018, an email was sent to FRWG members announcing
that the user survey questionnaire was complete.
Flow Research conducted the
end-user survey on behalf of the FRWG. Several thousand surveys were
emailed out, and several hundred hardcopy versions. By the time of our third
meeting, we had relatively few completed questionnaires. We discussed those
results at the meeting. However, as a result of continued efforts in reaching
out to end-users, by September we had substantially more returned and completed
questionnaires.
The FRWG agreed to use the
completed questionnaires as data to help create whitepapers on recalibration of
the main types of flowmeters. We decided to begin with ultrasonic, then go
to Coriolis and turbine. Our goal is to have some whitepapers in draft form to
discuss at the fourth FRWG meeting on June 20, 2019.
Flow Recalibration Working Group (FRWG)
The purpose of this group is to arrive at a group of criteria that end-users can
employ to determine if their flowmeters need to be recalibrated. This does
not necessarily equate to a specific time interval. Instead, the goal is
to have some tests, programs, or criteria that can be run to determine when a
flowmeter needs to be recalibrated.
The idea for this group came
out of a series of in-person interviews Flow Research did with end-users of flowmeters in
the
Middle East
in 2009. We interviewed 15 companies from
Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE about their use of flowmeters. Many of them expressed
frustration that there was no generally agreed upon interval when their
ultrasonic flowmeters need to be recalibrated. There was also the fact
that at that time there was no recalibration facility in the
Middle East
. These people asked us if we could help them arrive at a standard. I
(Jesse Yoder) said that I would do what I could.
Since that time I have spoken
to the AGA, which seems to have no interest in taking on this subject. One
positive development is that Emerson Process has built a flow calibration
facility in Abu Dhabi, but it is currently limited to four inch liquid recalibrations. Some
countries have instituted their own rules about calibration frequency, but these
periods vary and seem to differ on a country by country basis.
The series of six studies that
Flow Research did in 2012 on gas flow measurement grew out of the
Middle East
interviews. Since then we have completed a new edition of this series. Flow
Research has also completed a study of flow calibration facilities. We
have identified 147 such facilities worldwide, and have published two studies
that describe these facilities and their capabilities. One study is on
liquid recalibration and one is on recalibration of gas flowmeters. You can find a description of these studies at www.flowcalibration.org.
This Working Group is strictly a
volunteer effort, and so far has no official sanction. However, our hope is
that if we do succeed in coming up with a usable set of recalibration
guidelines, we can approach some of the organizations like AGA and API for
approval of the guidelines. Short of this, we can publish our report and
circulate it among interested manufacturers and end-users. Since no one
has to our knowledge attempted this before, we think the results will be met with
quite a lot of interest.
So far, the following people
have volunteered to be on this committee:
Dr. Jesse Yoder (Flow Research) (jesse@flowresearch.com)
(Founder)
Tom Ballard (Circor
International) (thomas.ballard@circor.com)
Peter Brand (Avans Hogeschool
Tilburg) (peter@sparckxconsulting.com)
Dr. Gregor Brown (Cameron) (gbrown18@slb.cameron.com)
Bob Carrell (Hoffer Flow
Controls) (bcarrell@hofferflow.com)
Joel
Clancy (CEESI) (jclancy@ceesi.com)
Terry Cousins (CEESI
Measurement Solutions) (tcousins@ceesims.com)
Pankaj
Gupta (GAIL India Limited) (pk_gupta@gail.co.in)
Thomas
Boy Jacobsen (FORCE Technology) (tyj@force.dk)
Dr. Aaron Johnson (NIST) (aaron.johnson@nist.gov)
Dr. Tom Kegel (CEESI) (tkegel@ceesi.com)
Tom Kemme (Magnetrol) (tkemme@magnetrol.com)
Dick Laan (Krohne Altometer) (d.laan@krohne.com)
John Lansing (Lansing
Measurement Services LLC) (sonicjohn@earthlink.net)
Dr.
Phil Mark (TUV SUD Ltd.) (phil.mark@tuv-nel.co.uk)
Tom O’Banion (Micro Motion) (tom.obanion@emerson.com)
Didier
Pabois (Faure Herman, Groupe IDEX) (dpabois@idexcorp.com)
Dean Standiford (Emerson
Process Management) (dean.standiford@emerson.com)
Jesus J. Aguilera Mena (Endress+Hauser
Flowtec AG) (jesus-jaime.aguilera-mena@flowtec.endress.com)
Steve
Stewart (Oil & Gas Process Solutions) (Steve.stewart@flowmd.com)
Tom
Stonehouse (Baker Hughes, a GE Compny) (thomas.stonehouse@bhge.com)
Remco
van den Berg (VSL b.v.) (RvdBerg@vsl.nl)
Eric
van Doorn (ODS Metering Systems BV) (Eric.vandoorn@kloeckner.com)
Aguko
Willis (Kenya Bureau of Standards) (agukow@kebs.org)
The
first task of the committee is to formulate criteria for determining when
an inline multipath ultrasonic custody transfer needs to be recalibrated.
This included running a software program, using a check meter, running
diagnostics, doing dry calibration, or any other method that may be effective.
We then plan to address other types of ultrasonic flowmeters, as well as
other flowmeter types such as turbine, differential pressure with different
primary elements, vortex, magnetic, and thermal.
Jesse Yoder
President, Flow Research
Articles About Calibration Topics
Also see:
www.FlowCalibration.org
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