There are many factors that must be considered to properly design a liquid measurement station.
components of measurement stations are similar, the criterion that determines the equipment to utilize for a given application or product can vary significantly from project to project. This paper will address the most common applications in the liquid hydrocarbon industry for large volume product measurement as it pertains to custody transfer applications. Custody transfer measurement includes accurate quantity measurement using metering, though equally important is accurate quality measurement using quality and sampling equipment. These custody transfer and/or fiscal metering stations consist of mechanical components and instrumentation on a skidded system along with simple to complex supervisory control systems with flow computers, programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and a human machine interface (HMI) with customized programming to achieve the required measurement goal.
Applications
Liquid measurement applications can be as simple as a single meter with an electronic totalizer in the upstream production market to complex multi-meter run skidded system with motorized valves, flow control with automatic proving and complex control systems in the midstream and downstream markets. The control systems are capable of generating alarms, reports, selecting meter factors based on the variables of product density, viscosity, flow rate and remote communications from the end user central control room. Applications vary as widely as the number of liquid hydrocarbon products that are metered today.
