Natural Gas Pipe Flow Meters Energy = Dollars

Flowmeter Directory is a website that has all kinds of people from all backgrounds of flow measurement. Strangely what we have found is that a person may be well versed in a certain type of flowmeter and the industry in which it is being used but be completely unaware of what is going on somewhere else.

Doing this website for the past 8 years has also been a journey for us and we feel that we have not yet even begun to understand how massive the flow meter industry as a whole actually is.  Even experts will find something new and will be amazed at the myriad of applications that flowmeters are being used for in our every day lives. The Flowmeter Directory is not a physics forum but physics is necessary to our understanding of many of the basic principles behind flow measurement. 

This article is for the rest of us who have an interest in what we could call a subset of flow measurement that has branched out and could probably come under the heading of custody transfer natural gas metering. Custody Transfer implies buying and selling and so metering stations are designed to accurately report for billing and internal accountability.

They are part of a “cash register” and if companies are buying and selling millions of dollars worth of product, it is vital that there be agreement on what is being sold or bought in order to avoid chaos and ultimately unnecessary litigation regarding gas contracts. A small error in measurement can mean a large monetary loss for either side of the fence.

This is why there are so many standards, internationally accepted practices and organizations that need to be satisfied before a manufacturer can be selling its devices for custody transfer flow measurement.

When looking at the diameter of a gas pipeline it is important to remember that the line is pressurized. This is because the value of what is contained in the line could be misconstrued if a person is not thinking in terms of mass.  These lines are not filled with incompressible water, they are packed  with a compressible gas !

The Mass flow is crucial because without mass flow, it is impossible to eventually determine how much product you “actually” have and without knowing what you own, you won’t know how much money is involved.