Emerson flowmeter monitors itself

London — Micro Motion Inc., part of Emerson Process Management, has unveiled a new technology that provides in-situ assessment of the calibration and condition of its Elite brand Coriolis flowmeters.

Emerson’s market feedback surveys have showed enhanced condition monitoring capabilities very close to the top of the list of customer requirements, Chuck Stack, director of technology at Micro Motion, said at a presentation in London.

The “self-verification technology” reduces meter validation efforts and costs — including the need to stop the process — and enables predictive maintenance that addresses issues such as erosion, cracking, pitting or coating within the meter, said Stack.

“One of the biggest expenses for companies working with Coriolis meters is taking the meter out for verification, continued Stack. He cited examples of a pharma industry customer spending $500,000 a year on this activity and an oil & gas client who reckoned that taking out meters cost up to $3,000/year per device.

Micro Motion’s solution involves comparing mechanical and electrical properties of the Coriolis meter against a baseline established at the factory prior to shipment. For example, Stack showed how by monitoring changes in tube stiffness the system could detect erosion in flowmeters used in an oil & gas application.

The method, which takes a few minutes to run, is enabled by next generation MVD technology, said Stack. The resulting real-time data show operators if the performance of the Coriolis meter is changing and alerts them to non-conformance issues, he said.

Emerson officials conceded that it would take time to establish the technology, particularly because of the tight regulation of production regimes in many target applications. These, they said, are largely in the pharmaceutical industry.

“Customers have to be able to introduce changes to working practices, otherwise they don’t get the value of (the technology),” said Stack.

As a first step, the Micro Motion engineer said that the self-verification technology is likely to be introduced on a trial basis among major pharma companies. It would subsequently find more widespread commercial adoption in the market at large, he predicted.