Makpetrol employs Emerson gas metering at Macedonian station

Southampton, UK -- Makpetrol has introduced new ultrasonic measurement technology at its gas metering station, which measures gas flow from a pipeline originating in Russia. The Daniel Gas Metering System from Emerson Process Management is being used to confirm the accuracy of an existing three-stream system based on orifice-measurement technology.

Emerson’s remit encompassed design, fabrication, inspection, test, and delivery of a complete Daniel gas metering system at the custody transfer gas metering installation at the Makpetrol Border Station in Macedonia. The vendor’s role included a commissioning service and guaranteeing the operability, accuracy and quality of all components, including conformance to local and national authority and code requirements.

The metering system was commissioned throughout 2005 and since then the difference between orifice and SeniorSonic base volume flows has been typically below 0.5%. The diagnostic checks and inter-comparisons have given a much higher level of confidence in metering accuracy than before, and Makpetrol and Gazprom have now approved the system use in primary flow measurement.

"We are now certain that we measure gas flow accurately as the different physical measuring principle of USM and orifice prevents a systematic error affecting the measurement result of the two gas meters,” said Milos Colovic, manager of metrology department and head of Border Station at Makpetrol. “Pay/check configuration of the metering system allows us to verify that the meters are performing correctly.”

According to Colovic, Makpetrol is planning to extend the use of the metering technology based on the Daniel SeniorSonic meter, to a third metering line.

Emerson supplied the two Daniel metering streams as pre-assembled flow metering tubes, each containing a 10-inch 600 SeniorSonic ultrasonic flow meter, Daniel Profiler flow conditioning plate, up and downstream pipe spools and pressure and temperature transmitters. Each stream was designed to accurately measure the full site flowrate of 180000 Standard cubic metres/hour.

The streams are designed to comply with both AGA-9 and ISO-5167 requirements. Flow measurement and analysis calculations, as well as PID flow control are handled by Daniel FloBoss S600 Flowcomputers. Gas quality monitoring is provided by Daniel Model 500 Gas Chromatographs with Model 2350A controllers.

The system was supplied with a Daniel DMS+ Supervisory System which generates the Border Station hourly, daily, weekly and monthly totals for the meter readings. The operator also uses Daniel CUI 4.10 software to monitor advanced diagnostic parameters such as gain, signal-to-noise ratio, performance, VOS, profile geometry checks and timing checks.