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Status of flow metering Single train architecture with Z configuration

KD Engineering is an automation integration company that pro- with government finance and policy’ and custody means ‘safe-
vides specialised highly integrated solutions for custody trans- keeping or guardianship’. Neither term defines a level of meter-
fer measurement applications for the oil & gas industry. Custody ing accuracy in itself, although both are taken to mean the ‘best
Metering is an essential tool for the profitable operation of off- accuracy’ in normal oil field practice.
shore platforms. Metering systems are in constant evolution to
the problem
Custody Metering for Electricity
meet the exacting standards for accuracy, reliability and safety
required for the operation of these increasingly sophisticated Metering of gas flow alone does not reveal the actual value of
and automated platforms and, given their extreme space con- the gas being supplied. Flow and density will vary according to

Generation straints, the need is for compact, light equipment.

why metering matters...

temperature, whereas Custody Metering is centred upon mass
as opposed to volume. Additionally, the calorific value of the
gas will vary according to the chemical variation of the gas as
Simply, it is an important cost saving. If a typical offshore oil it extracted. This requires a solution that is called ‘Diagnostic &
production facility produces 150,000 bpd (barrels per day) and Performance of gas quality and Metering’ (DPM) - used in the
The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority has commissioned a new gas powered
incurs a random $5 barrel extraction cost, an under-reading application for the Dubai Electricity & Water Authority.
electricity generation plant in Aweer where the turbines are powered by natural gas
error of 0.5 % in flow can lose you $1.3m in a year assuming
that is extracted offshore. A key part of the control of the plant is Custody Metering
an oil price of $35 a barrel. As a custody metering station only towards a solution
– where the mass of the gas and its calorific value is measured as it is supplied from
costs around $1m, it will have paid for itself in a little over nine Most authorities insist upon ‘stand alone’ flow computers for
the gas field. A consortium of Siemens, Mott McDonald, and Process Group sub-
months. At $50 a barrel—the cost at the time of writing—that each metering stream. This allows individual units to continue
contracted the metering skid to the integrator in instrumentation & metering skids
loss, or potential saving, amounts to $2.25m per year. operating even if a neighbour is damaged. A supervisory com-
Emphor Fzo. Emphor Fzo has been looking for several years for the ideal DPM
However, the primary reason for offshore metering is security, puter can ‘manage’ the disparate stream, as well as prover flow
(Diagnostic Performance and Monitoring) software for metering skid projects that
as you can only be sure of the output of a facility if you meter computers, alongside additional tasks such as flow scheduling
could satisfy DEWA (Dubai Electricity Water Authority) specifications. In 2007, after
it at source. It is possible to offload crude by shuttle tanker to and automatic flow sampler control. These are now most often
meeting Mr. Daniel Geha, area manager of COPA-DATA Middle-East, they were
a shore terminal for custody metering. However, in practice this ‘dual redundant’ arrangements rather than the earlier and argu-
convinced that zenon® technology from COPA-DATA would be the perfect solution.
opens the way to disagreements with production partners and ably much more complex ‘hot standby’ systems.
KD engineering has been responsible of implementing the integration project with the
the tax authorities over issues such as ‘bill of lading’. Many now prefer a single station supervisory function since
support of COPA-DATA Middle-East that has assured total success in the project.
the primary metering data is retained in the separate flow com-
fiscal, custody and allocation puters.
In the metering business the terms ‘fiscal’ and ‘custody’ are A flow computer is an electronic computational device which
essentially interchangeable, although fiscal means ‘concerned implements the required algorithms to convert the raw data
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received from flow meters, to which it is connected, into vol- and very complex thermodynamics calculation has been made
umes at base conditions. A flow computer also audits changes possible by zenon’s automatic multithreading, ‘mathematical
that have been made to any of the parameters required to turn driver’ and the straton softPLC that provided real-time capa-
the raw flow meter data into volumetric information. It records bilities and C++ encapsulating container for the thermodynamic
events and alarms related to the flow meter (for example, loss of real-time calculation.
flow, loss of required electrical signals from measurement trans-
ducers, or transition of these electrical signals near their upper zenon in metering systems;
or lower range). It will keep a running tally of the volume for key features...
each flow meter it monitors and perform a ‘gauge off’ of this To take an example; each of the two metering streams has two
volume on an hourly, daily or monthly basis. The flow data is Flow Meters, two Flow Computers and a Gas Chromatograph re-
made available externally through an electronic interface so that quires only a zenon license of 512 tags. For four stream systems
other computers can download the information for the purposes it requires 1024 tags; and for a four stream system where GC
System Architecture, showing zenon in
of supervision, accounting or auditing. composition has to be transferred to another DPM, 2048 Tags.
dual-redundant mode.
A gas chromatograph is a laboratory device that is used to Sometimes only one station has real access to the Gas Chro-
analyse gas or light liquid streams to determine their composi- matograph, and this station then acts as a Modbus slave gate-
tion by component. Gas stream compositions are typically re- way to several other stations several kilometres away; thanks
ported in ‘mole’4 or volume percent. Liquid stream composi- to straton this allows a zenon station to act as a Modbus slave
tions are typically reported in liquid volume percent. to the other stations even with the Modbus serial protocol. It is
also note-worthy that the duty/standby server redundancy is
the solution easily configured in zenon with one mouse click.
zenon offers both functionality and value for such applications, A most important feature of DPM software is its capability
Display pages with totals for Mass, Volume and Energy, the operators.
key issues being one-click redundancy, open networking and to interface as a gateway to several DCS interfaces; information
obtained from the flow computers. Provision of an HMI and presenting all retrieved and
a vast library of drivers to connect to various instruments and such as totalizing flow and alarms must be sent safely to the DCS
Record and display Real time and historical trending pages, calculated data from the flow computer, ultrasonic meters
devices that comprise a metering system. zenon is a high per- system; using the zenon process gateway and straton, multi link
Alarm History & summary. and internally calculated data. A number of graphic mimic
formance SCADA system, therefore all aspects of visualisation to several DCS channels is made easy.
Gas Quality page with actual gas composition from the gas pages of the process contained in menu-structure are
were to be found within the basic package and could be easily zenon fully handles system diagnostics, metering overview,
chromatograph. presented to the operator.
configured to provide displays of plant status and detailed re- totals, reports, trending, alarm history & summary, gas quality
Appropriate pages with continuously monitored ultrasonic Trending in real-time and historical for all major signals in
ports and alarms. and also a continuous monitoring of meter diagnostics (swirl,
meter diagnostics, ultrasonic footprint & ratio, velocity of the system, including the VOS for the ultrasonic meters,
asymmetry), ultrasonic foot print and ratio, velocity of sound
sound verification and performance monitoring. and other parameters.
zenon in application... verification and performance monitoring. zenon also handles
Totalization of individual stream data into overall station Alarm management of real-time alarms. Alarms are derived
The DPM SCADA software supervises a two stream line meter- Gas Calculations in accordance with international standards such
flow and flow rate totals. from primary input signals as well as calculated figures.
ing system (duty and standby/master meter system) configured as API/AGA 10/ ISO as well as customer-specific logic. zenon’s
Alarms are printed on the station alarm printer and stored
in ‘Z pattern’ arrangement. The ‘two streams’ arrangement is embedded communication drivers with integrated protocol ana-
functionality and features on the hard disk. Alarms messages and ‘return to normal’
called a ‘Train configuration’. This comprises; a multi-path Ultra- lyzers are fully utilised.
that has also been developed messages, as well as acknowledgements that are to be
Sonic Flow Meter (USFM) to measure the flow in each of the
by kd engineering... reported. Alarms are suppressed when a metering line is
two streams. A ‘prover’ flow-computer that reads flow from the zenon displays information in a
Checking the validity of the stream flow computers. closed.
USFM flow-meter and performs the following calculations in standard oil & gas industry layout
Determination of the ‘foot print’ based on the ratio of the Validation of the meter cross section (Z) of the master
each of the two streams; correction to give the flow rate under for....
VOS (Velocity of Sound) for each path for each ultrasonic meters and check meters.
standard condition (Volume of gas differ according to tempera- Graphical display with System diagnostics containing
meter and the display this footprint graphically. The appropriate gas composition is sent to the appropriate
ture and pressure), calculation of total flow in term of energy, device information for each connected device.
Obtaining diagnostic information, including status flow computers, after verification of the analysis in
mass and volume, and it also performs the AGA10* calculation A Graphical display page with an overview of the metering
information and waveform data from the ultrasonic meters, accordance with ISO69762 energy calculation on the
to check performance of the USFM, it also performs the ISO data. It contains relevant information as retrieved from the
and presentation this diagnostic data on a display page for diagnostics computer.
6976** calculation to check performance of the Gas. Advanced flow computers.
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A multi-path Ultra-Sonic Flow Meter (USFM)

measures the flow in each of the two streams.

flow from the DPM at any time and over any period. This im- differences between the calculated value and the VOS
portant information is held in the zenon archive database. An per path of each connected ultrasonic meter
important product of the DPM software is the Totalizing flow Validation of the meter cross section (Z) of the master
that is read from the Flow Computer. A representative of the meters and check meters.
customer came from time to time to compare flow computer val-
ues and DPM values – they were identical. summary
In developing a solution based upon zenon KD Engineering This application for the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority
found that it was easy to use – allowing attention to be focussed demonstrates the suitability, capability and adaptability of ze-
upon the application rather than the intricacies of the SCADA non (and straton) in this area of process control and automa-
system. tion. KD Engineering fully utilised zenon’s in-built strengths
and added key application functionality, based upon their ex-
future perience, which made their solution both robust and success-
This project is large and on-going. KD Engineering has seen that ful. Where special requirements were required the support of
The operator is able manually select either the in-use gas experience in development zenon has a key role to play in this application area – in future COPA-DATA was readily available to provide new, tested and
composition or a keypad value in case of GC failure. Mr Karim Saikali, KD Engineering, “...in zenon we have a very stages straton, the embedded SCADA-logic of zenon, will be supported functionality. Custody Metering is a critical area in
Communication with the OMNI flow computer using the powerful platform to build application solutions that are plat- used to provide additional functionality, using the robust tools process control for the Oil & Gas sector – one that is safe with
Modbus/Serial protocol to obtain transmitter values. Flow form independent with a modern network technology with dis- that straton offers. Mr Saikali, “... in the next three projects we zenon.
totals, alarms, hourly data, daily data, accumulative totals tributed client-server structure and very sophisticated circular will use straton, as a matter of fact only one of the stations will
per stream, and station totals. The DPM acts as Modbus redundancy; and, most of all, more than 250 different driver communicate with the G.C. and act as a Modbus slave to the
master (RTU) device, whilst the flow computer acts as a connections allow connection to all kind of protocol standards others stations using the serial Modbus protocol, so straton is
Modbus (RTU) slave. in the Oil & Gas industry. Working in close partnership with CO- need to configure 3 Modbus serial driver slaves.” Utilisation
Communication with each ultrasonic meter to obtain PA-DATA a specially developed ASCII Modbus was created for of zenon with straton means that risk is further reduced for all 1
AGA 10: method for the calculation of the speed of sound in
diagnostic and performance data, and to display all this application, which was also needed to be configured with a stakeholders in the project. natural gas and the individual components that make up natural
related data. backup channel. KD Engineering see an efficient way to the future using gas.
Communication with the Gas Chromatograph to obtain gas Mr Saikali also stated, “We provided the best support to our zenon & straton-based solutions; whilst not everything was 2
ISO 6976: method for the calculation of the superior calorific
composition data, including H2S. The gas composition data client and were very flexible to their demands, this is the stron- required on this project they have additional functionality for value and the inferior calorific value, density, relative density and
is downloaded, after validation, to the appropriate gest reason why the client switched to us.” Diagnostic and Performance Metering applications that will be Wobbe index3 of dry natural gas
connected flow computer set. The GC data is derived from required in future projects such as... 3
The Wobbe Index (WI) is an indicator of the interchangeability
the controller is also available for transmission to the benefits Inbuilt embedded communication drivers with integrated of fuel gases such as natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG),
central DCS over the serial Link. At the core of the application is an accurate and auditable his- protocol analyzers. and Town Gas and is frequently defined in the specifications of
Calculation of the velocity of sound based on the gas tory. There are daily report and monthly reports these are stored Gas calculations in accordance with international standards gas supply and transport utilities.
composition and the pressure and temperature of each between 6 months and 1 year. The reports are used by customer such as API/AGA 10/ ISO as well as customer specific logic. 4
mole – SI unit of substance amount - the basic SI unit of amount
meter run in accordance with the AGA-10 and monitor representatives and operators. The detailed reports are used for Calculation of the velocity of sound based on the gas com of a substance equal to the amount containing the same number
differences between the calculated value and the VOS per daily operation (instead of using DCS reports); moreover if dis- position and the pressure and temperature of each of elementary units as the number of atoms in 12 grams of car-
path of each connected ultrasonic meter. agreement with suppliers occurs they can check the totalizing meter run in accordance with AGA-10 and monitor bon-12.