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Coriolis Flow Measurement

Coriolis flow measurement technology has grown significantly over the past 30 years. While initially slow to gain acceptance due to high prices and difficult installation, improvements have made Coriolis meters competitive with other accurate technologies. Coriolis meters directly measure mass flow without needing fluid density, and have no moving parts subject to wear. Recent advances in digital technology are allowing Coriolis meters to handle even more challenging applications like two-phase flows and batching, expanding their use.

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153 views3 pages

Coriolis Flow Measurement

Coriolis flow measurement technology has grown significantly over the past 30 years. While initially slow to gain acceptance due to high prices and difficult installation, improvements have made Coriolis meters competitive with other accurate technologies. Coriolis meters directly measure mass flow without needing fluid density, and have no moving parts subject to wear. Recent advances in digital technology are allowing Coriolis meters to handle even more challenging applications like two-phase flows and batching, expanding their use.

Uploaded by

Mantuom
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Coriolis Flow measurement

While Coriolis flow measurement technology has become the go-to solution for accurate
measurement of many hard-to-handle substances, areas remain in which the technology is
evolving to cover even more challenging applications. What makes Coriolis so exciting for
those of us in the flow measurement world is we do not yet see the end of the road. There
are still frontiers we need to explore.

With worldwide revenues currently estimated at greater than $400 million, headed to $600
million in the not-too-distant future according to recent reports, Coriolis meters are still
among the fastest-growing flow measurement technologies. But this has not always been
the case.

The first meters exploiting the Coriolis principle hit the market more than 30 years ago,
and despite the specific benefits, acceptance was slow. In addition to the skepticism
surrounding any technology, prices were high, and installation was not easy. Installation
sensitivity and zero instability required excessive support, and thin-walled tubes made the
meters prone to corrosion and restricted their use to low-pressure applications, suitable
only for use with liquids. The earliest designs had relatively high pressure drops, and their
meter factors (calibration factors) were subject to changes in fluid properties, such as fluid
density.

Improvements in ease of use, installation flexibility, and reliability during the past decade
have put Coriolis flowmeters among the top tier of flow measurement techniques,
competing with other accurate technologies such as positive displacement (PD) and
turbine. However, Coriolis flowmeters provide two distinct advantages: There are no
bearings to wear or get dirty, and you can measure the mass flow directly without the
need to determine the fluid density.

Most of the market growth in recent years continues to be in areas where Coriolis has
traditionally been strong, such as in mass flow measurement of highly valued liquids,
where Coriolis’ unparalleled accuracy and rangeability provide capital payback in months
rather than years. Technological advances have also opened up new Coriolis applications.
No longer limited to measuring just liquids, Coriolis technology is gaining widespread
acceptance for gas flow measurement, causing growth in that sector as well.

Coriolis force, named after the French physicist, Gaspard Gustave Coriolis, results when a
mass moving in a rotating frame of reference experiences a tangential acceleration
proportional to its linear velocity times the angular velocities. This is the Coriolis
acceleration. It thus generates a force proportional to its mass times this Coriolis
acceleration we call the Coriolis force. Now if we assume the mass is in fact a mass of
fluid, then the Coriolis force is proportional to the mass flowrate of that fluid.

Because industrial process lines do not typically feature rotating pipes, exploiting the
Coriolis principle for flow measurement requires oscillating a section of pipe. This produces
an oscillating Coriolis force, which can be sensed and analyzed to determine the mass rate
of flow.

Since in practice the Coriolis flowmeter oscillates at its resonant frequency, and the
resonant frequency is dependent on fluid density, an independent measure of fluid density
is also provided by most Coriolis mass flowmeters. Knowing mass flow from the Coriolis
force and density from the resonant frequency, it becomes a simple matter to divide the
two to get volumetric flowrate. So, most Coriolis mass flowmeters give accurate
measurements of mass flow, fluid density, and through a simple division of these two,
volumetric flow.

Since the oscillating tubes of a Coriolis flowmeter must also contain the process pressure
up to at least an ANSI Class 600 rating, the wall thickness, and therefore the stiffness of
the tubes, is relatively high.Oscillation at resonance requires the least amount of energy,
which is necessary for the technology to be suitable for use in hazardous locations.

Coriolis flowmeters have traditionally proven to be superior in applications such as:

 Mass flow of single phase liquids or gases, particularly of high value material
 Batching/ filling
 Precise blending of multiple streams
 Slurries n Viscous (i.e. Low Reynolds number) flows
 Custody transfer
 Density of liquids
 Net flow of two component mixtures
 Concentration of two component mixtures
 Net oil
 Cryogenic liquids
 Sanitary flows

Coriolis has found its way into just about every process industry, and many national,
international, and industry groups have written, or are drafting, documents covering
Coriolis technology. These include ISO, ASME, OIML, NCWM, API, and AGA, just to name a
few.

Areas that challenged the technology and have been the focus of the most recent
developments include:

 Liquids, such as ethylene oxide, at or near the boiling point where rapid changes of
state can occur in or near the flowmeter
 Two phase mixtures of gas and liquid n Multiphase/ multi-component flows n Batching
to or from empty
 Small volume proving for custody transfer of petroleum liquids where you don’t
achieve the repeatability requirements without averaging many multiple pass runs

Recent advances in digital technology are opening up new doors for Coriolis flowmeters,
including even these traditionally all but impossible applications. With the use of high-
speed digital flowtube control and signal processing, we’re now overcoming or greatly
reducing traditional barriers. For instance, you can accommodate changes in mechanical
gain that result from rapid phase changes of a boiling liquid or chaotic flows of mixtures of
gas and liquid with mass flow accuracies never before achievable with such flows. Another
area where the new high speed digital Coriolis technology is gaining traction is in batching
while starting from an empty flowtube for those applications that require purging of the
fluid from the previous batch. Coriolis techniques have proven functionally and financially
beneficial in unloading trucks or railcars, where the final seconds or minutes of the load
contain large amounts of gas that get sucked out of the vessel.
With the new digital technologies, you can achieve dynamic responses on the order of
milliseconds. This opens the door to fast batching or blending of small quantities of liquids
or single pass proving of Coriolis flowmeters with small volume provers.

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