When today’s crude oil prices are taken into consideration, it becomes a much more important part of crude oil measurement to be able to accurately measure the online water content whether the shipment of crude oil is coming through a separator or from a pipeline or a tanker. Many operators consider the accurate measurement of the water content to be critical.
A typical example in case – a LACT (lease automatic custody transfer) – a system containing pumps, metering and BS&W measurement equipment. In this example, the unit automatically begins pumping from a lease storage tank into the crude gathering pipeline.
When the pump has lowered the level of liquid in the lease tank to a determined level, the LACT unit shuts off automatically. The EASZ-1 BS&W or watercut monitor is responsible for measuring the electrical characteristics of the liquid stream and reports the dielectric permittivity as a percentage value of water in the flowing stream.
In cases where operators are concerned about the effect of bottom water either with the baseline spot sampling or the automatic watercut measurement, the EASZ-1 is shipped in an MBW configuration with integral mixers upstream to the measuring device following the recommendations in API 8.2. for automatic sampling.
Operators familiar with sampling standards easily accept the same principles apply to the determination of water content BS&W in oil using electronic methods in online watercut measurement. |
