Pressure and Temperature Flow Compensation Formula

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I&C.net - Technical Information May 2020
What is Flow
Compensation in
Pressure and
Temperature?
Version Date Description

A 2018/10/26 First Release
B 2019/05/08 Update with some new comments.
C 2020/05/31 New format
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Index
1. Why do you do process temperature and pressure flow compensation? 3
2. Pressure Temperature Compensation Flow Measurement Formula 3
3. Obtaining the Real Density Formula 4
4. Deriving the Differential Pressure Flow Equation 6
5. Flow compensation formula 9
6. References 10
https://instrumentationandcontrol.net Page 2 of 10
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1. Why do you do process temperature and

pressure flow compensation?
In gas flow measurement, the density of the gas changes as pressure and
temperature change. This change in density can affect the accuracy of the
measured flow rate if it is uncompensated. Temperature, pressure
compensated flow control is a flow modified mathematically by one or more
additional variables, like :
• Temperature
• Pressure
• Density
• Viscosity
Producing a resultant value for flow compensation that is more accurate. It

is compensated for the error effects of the other variables.
2. Pressure Temperature Compensation Flow

Measurement Formula
Orifice meters require Pressure Temperature Compensation Formula
when we use them to measure gas flow in pipes with variable operating
pressure and temperature. Normally we do not have an online density
measurement. In this case we will consider the density constant to simplify
the calculations. If you want to perform a density compensation in the flow
measurement you must take into account the density variation.
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The variations in pressure and temperature have a significant effect on

gas density, this is why without this pressure and temperature compensation
the flow measurement can have large errors.
This post will help you to understand the basics concepts around this
formulas (flow compensation formula) and will also let you implement them on
your process control system.
3. Obtaining the Real Density Formula
Staring with the ideal gas law, we can extract density from the formula and
calculate de density for two different situations (design and real). We need to
apply a density compensation in flow measurement.
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Where :
• P = Pressure
• T = Temperature
• V = Volume
• Mw = Molecular Weight
• n = Number of mols
• R = Gas Constant
• rho = gas density
After simplify the previous equation we can have different results depending
on the different situations, so we can have a set of design conditions and also
a set of real situation conditions….
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Operating with the formulas for real density formula and design density we
can obtain the formula to define the real density taking in account the
pressure and temperature compensation.
4. Deriving the Differential Pressure Flow

Equation
To obtain the Differential Pressure Flow equation we will use two basic fluid
mechanics equations : Euler’s equation of continuity and Bernoulli’s principle,
Where :
• V = linear velocity of fluid

• A = Area
And..
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Where :
• P = pressure
• V=linear velocity of fluid
• g = standard gravity
• h = height
…rearranging the previous equation and assuming constant density and

h1=h2 we have ….
Now it’s time to express fluid’s velocity in function of pipe diameter (D) and
orifice (d) plate restriction diameter ….
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and after that, we can substitute V1 inside the previous equation, the
resulting equation gives us the velocity at the restriction :
To calculate the volumetric flow we have to multiply both sides by the area of
the restriction …
If we concentrate all the constants in just constant called K we have the

following expressions referring to QV and QM :
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5. Flow compensation formula
Now it’s time to substitute the real density by the density calculated in section
3.
After the substitution we will have the following formulas which are used to
calculate the compensated flow for every orifice plate flowmeter (depending
if you need volumen or mass flow).
Remember that you must use the flow square root extraction
formula in your DCS !!!
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6. References
• EMERSON
(2015) Theory of dP Flow
• MOORE Products
(1994) Pressure and temperature compensation of an orifice meter
using the model 352 single loop controller
• Wikipedia.org
• EMERSON
Rosemount Differential Pressure Flow Gas Flow Measurement
• ISA
Maintenance of Instruments & Systems, Second Edition
Lawrence D. Goettsche.
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I&C.net - Technical Information May 2020

Version Date Description

1. Why do you do process temperature and

Producing a resultant value for flow compensation that is more accurate. It

2. Pressure Temperature Compensation Flow

The variations in pressure and temperature have a significant effect on

3. Obtaining the Real Density Formula

4. Deriving the Differential Pressure Flow

• V = linear velocity of fluid

…rearranging the previous equation and assuming constant density and

If we concentrate all the constants in just constant called K we have the

5. Flow compensation formula

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