E-Zine January 2015
I gave a class in basic flow measurement the other night, and one of the attendees asked me a question that should have made me pause. He said that one of his clients had given him a requirement to write a specification for a flowmeter to be installed downstream from a pump. It was a Coriolis mass flowmeter. I asked him what the fluid was, and he said that it was plain water at ambient temperature and reasonable pressure.
It should have made me pause, but it didn’t because for years I’ve heard the same thing. I once visited a pharmaceuticals plant in Pennsylvania where the chief I&C engineer proudly told me that he didn’t use anything but Coriolis meters in his plant. I asked him what he did for water flows, and he said he used Coriolis. I asked him what he used for steam, and he said vortex, but if a Coriolis meter would work, he’d use that. Stunned, I asked him why. “Simple,” he said. “I know that Coriolis meters work, and they are real accurate. And now I only have to train my techs on one kind of meter.”
I’ve often said that if I had to be restricted to only two kinds of flowmeter ever, I would want a magnetic flowmeter and a Coriolis mass flowmeter. Thankfully, those are not the only kinds of flowmeters there are. There is a reason for this.
Click here to read “Part 2: When Do You Measure Mass Flow”
From Flow Control (July 2002)
ISSN 1538-5280
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