BP orders GE flow meters for major refinery expansion project

Billerica, Massachusetts - BP America placed a $1.1-million order for flow meters from GE Sensing & Inspection Technologies. The devices will be used to monitor 36 critical flow points for a new coker unit being built as part of a multi-billion dollar refinery expansion at BP Whiting.

The oil company is currently expanding and building new delayed coker units as part of its efforts to increase refining capacity and maximise the production of distillates.  Coker units are a critical part of the distillation process and are used to break down crude oil, with flow meters are used to help ensure the highest optimization and productivity of the distillation process.

The coker unit at BP Whiting is being developed on the Foster Wheeler process design. BP and Foster Wheeler requested maintenance free flow meters that offer high repeatability, allowing for advanced unit optimisation. GE¹s flow meter solutions offer high availability, virtually no pressure drop and better than 0.5% repeatability at temperatures up to 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit.

"With the strong push on building and upgrading delayed coking units in refineries, particularly those in the US, Canada, India, and Eastern Europe, refiners are choosing ultrasonic flowmeters for coker furnace feed flow in new construction to avoid problematic furnace tube clogging and to help optimise their operations," said Ashish Bhandari, product general manager for Flow at GE Sensing & Inspection Technologies.

According to GE, ultrasonic flow meters, such as its bundled waveguide technology, can operate in very hot, high pressure, and hostile environments inside the pipe. Unlike other technologies that have difficulty operating in these volatile conditions, ultrasonic flow meters provide operations with the confidence and reliability needed to reduce unit cycle times, which enables significant increases in production rates, the company said.