Colorado Engineering Experiment Station, Inc.

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Colorado Engineering Experiment Station, Inc. is an American corporation whose primary business is flow meter calibrations.

Contents

History

Starting in 1951, the Engineering Experiment Station was a program run by the University of Colorado designed for small rocket research and development. The facility tested turbine meters for the Naval Ordnance Test Station located in China Lake, California. In 1966, Dr. Tom Arnberg of the Mechanical Engineering Department aided in moving the facility to Nunn, Colorado, to separate from the university. The new facility, which used to be an Atlas nuclear missile silo, was renamed the Colorado Engineering Experiment Station, Inc. (or "CEESI" for short) and operated as a nonprofit research and testing facility until 1986. [1] [2]

In 1986, Walt Seidl and Steve Caldwell purchased the organization and reopened it as a commercial test facility. [1] CEESI expanded the Colorado facility with the addition of the Wet Gas Test Facility in 1998 [3] and the Iowa Natural Gas Facility in 1999.

Staff and accreditations


Rich Schoonover is the President of Corporate Operations. [4]

CEESI engineers are members of flow measurement standards committees organized by the AGA (American Gas Association), API (American Petroleum Institute), and ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers)[ citation needed ].

The lab is accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 by the American Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA). [5] [ third-party source needed ]

Flow meter testing

Flow meter testing includings turbine, vortex, differential-pressure, Coriolis, magnetic, positive-displacement, cone meter, ultrasonic and severalvalve types.

Facilities

Iowa

CEESI's Iowa facility, in Clear Lake, is located on a custody transfer location owned by the Northern Border Pipeline Company. This facility flows 1-2 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. The natural gas used for CEESI meter calibrations is diverted from the Northern Border pipeline, then repressurized and returned into the pipeline after calibrations are completed. [6] The Iowa facility began offering commercial calibrations in April 1999. The first meter calibrated at the Iowa facility was a 12-inch Instromet ultrasonic meter in March 1999. All of the instruments involved in the scale-up were controlled by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) staff and were calibrated using NIST's quality control processes. This scale-up calibration process is repeated regularly in accordance with NIST quality procedures. Flow meter calibration end users have the option to pay NIST to supervise calibrations; these calibrations qualify as NIST calibrations. [7]

Wet Gas

In March 1997, several energy companies formed a Joint Industry Project (JIP) to collectively fund research on gas metering, specifically for wet gas. The project was funded by member companies and the Gas Research Institute for three years. In 1998, CEESI constructed the Wet Gas Test Facility to facilitate flow meter testing on wet or unprocessed natural gas. [3]

Conferences

The International Symposium on Fluid Flow Measurement (ISFFM) is a conference held every three to four years which focuses on fluid flow measurement. CEESI served as the secretariat for the ISFFM in 1999, 2002, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2015, and 2018. [8]

Measurement Library website

The "CEESI Technical Library", a website with documents and references to papers related to fluid flow measurement, was created in October 2007. It is based on agreements with the American School of Gas Measurement Training, American Gas Association, and the Natural Gas Sampling Technology Conference to allow for the downloading of papers on flow measurement topics. Agreements with the International School of Hydrocarbon Measurement (ISHM) resulted in ISHM publications being available on the website. [9] Similarly, the organizers of the International Symposium on Fluid Flow Measurement (the North American Fluid Flow Measurement Council) granted permission to host symposium proceedings for downloading. [10] A partnership with the Pipeline Research Council International (also known as "PRCI") in 2008 allowed the expansion and further development of the library; the library's name was changed to the “Flow Measurement Technical Library” after this partnership began. By 2012, the following organizations/conferences that have allowed some portion of their papers to be downloadable by the public through the Flow Measurement Technical Library: International School of Hydrocarbon Measurement, International Symposium on Fluid Flow Measurement, Acadiana Flow Measurement Society, American School of Gas Measurement Technologies, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Western Gas Measurement Short Course, Canadian School of Hydrocarbon Measurement, Flow Measurement Institute, South East Asia Hydrocarbon Flow Measurement Workshop, North Sea Flow Measurement Workshop, and the Appalachian Gas Measurement Short Course. In 2017, the name was shortened to "Measurement Library". [10]

Related Research Articles

In measurement technology and metrology, calibration is the comparison of measurement values delivered by a device under test with those of a calibration standard of known accuracy. Such a standard could be another measurement device of known accuracy, a device generating the quantity to be measured such as a voltage, a sound tone, or a physical artifact, such as a meter ruler.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Petroleum engineering</span> Extracting crude oil and natural gas

Petroleum engineering is a field of engineering concerned with the activities related to the production of hydrocarbons, which can be either crude oil or natural gas. Exploration and production are deemed to fall within the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry. Exploration, by earth scientists, and petroleum engineering are the oil and gas industry's two main subsurface disciplines, which focus on maximizing economic recovery of hydrocarbons from subsurface reservoirs. Petroleum geology and geophysics focus on provision of a static description of the hydrocarbon reservoir rock, while petroleum engineering focuses on estimation of the recoverable volume of this resource using a detailed understanding of the physical behavior of oil, water and gas within porous rock at very high pressure.

Flow measurement is the quantification of bulk fluid movement. Flow can be measured using devices called flowmeters in various ways. The common types of flowmeters with industrial applications are listed below:

A wet gas is any gas with a small amount of liquid present. The term "wet gas" has been used to describe a range of conditions varying from a humid gas which is gas saturated with liquid vapour to a multiphase flow with a 90% volume of gas. There has been some debate as to its actual definition, and there is currently no fully defined quantitative definition of a wet gas flow that is universally accepted.

Petrophysics is the study of physical and chemical rock properties and their interactions with fluids.

Moisture analysis covers a variety of methods for measuring the moisture content in solids, liquids, or gases. For example, moisture is a common specification in commercial food production. There are many applications where trace moisture measurements are necessary for manufacturing and process quality assurance. Trace moisture in solids must be known in processes involving plastics, pharmaceuticals and heat treatment. Fields that require moisture measurement in gasses or liquids include hydrocarbon processing, pure semiconductor gases, bulk pure or mixed gases, dielectric gases such as those in transformers and power plants, and natural gas pipeline transport. Moisture content measurements can be reported in multiple units, such as: parts per million, pounds of water per million standard cubic feet of gas, mass of water vapor per unit volume or mass of water vapor per unit mass of dry gas.

The hydrocarbon dew point is the temperature at which the hydrocarbon components of any hydrocarbon-rich gas mixture, such as natural gas, will start to condense out of the gaseous phase. It is often also referred to as the HDP or the HCDP. The maximum temperature at which such condensation takes place is called the cricondentherm. The hydrocarbon dew point is a function of the gas composition as well as the pressure.

A multiphase flow meter is a device used to measure the individual phase flow rates of constituent phases in a given flow where oil, water and gas mixtures are initially co-mingled together during the oil production processes.

An oil production plant is a facility which processes production fluids from oil wells in order to separate out key components and prepare them for export. Typical oil well production fluids are a mixture of oil, gas and produced water. An oil production plant is distinct from an oil depot, which does not have processing facilities.

The term separator in oilfield terminology designates a pressure vessel used for separating well fluids produced from oil and gas wells into gaseous and liquid components. A separator for petroleum production is a large vessel designed to separate production fluids into their constituent components of oil, gas and water. A separating vessel may be referred to in the following ways: Oil and gas separator, Separator, Stage separator, Trap, Knockout vessel, Flash chamber, Expansion separator or expansion vessel, Scrubber, Filter. These separating vessels are normally used on a producing lease or platform near the wellhead, manifold, or tank battery to separate fluids produced from oil and gas wells into oil and gas or liquid and gas. An oil and gas separator generally includes the following essential components and features:

  1. A vessel that includes (a) primary separation device and/or section, (b) secondary "gravity" settling (separating) section, (c) mist extractor to remove small liquid particles from the gas, (d) gas outlet, (e) liquid settling (separating) section to remove gas or vapor from oil, (f) oil outlet, and (g) water outlet.
  2. Adequate volumetric liquid capacity to handle liquid surges (slugs) from the wells and/or flowlines.
  3. Adequate vessel diameter and height or length to allow most of the liquid to separate from the gas so that the mist extractor will not be flooded.
  4. A means of controlling an oil level in the separator, which usually includes a liquid-level controller and a diaphragm motor valve on the oil outlet.
  5. A back pressure valve on the gas outlet to maintain a steady pressure in the vessel.
  6. Pressure relief devices.
<span class="mw-page-title-main">Custody transfer</span> Oil and gas industry term for transfer of physical substance from one operator to another

Custody Transfer in the oil and gas industry refers to the transactions involving transporting physical substance from one operator to another. This includes the transferring of raw and refined petroleum between tanks and railway tank cars; onto ships, and other transactions. Custody transfer in fluid measurement is defined as a metering point (location) where the fluid is being measured for sale from one party to another. During custody transfer, accuracy is of great importance to both the company delivering the material and the eventual recipient, when transferring a material.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fred Meissner</span>

Fred F. Meissner was an American geologist and engineer who contributed to the fields of geology, geophysics, engineering, petroleum engineering, geochemistry, mineralogy, physics, mining, economic geology, and fishing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alden Research Laboratory</span>

Alden Research Laboratory, Inc. (Alden) was founded in 1894 as part of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). It is the oldest continuously operating hydraulic laboratory in the United States. Today, as an independent entity, Alden has become a recognized leader in the field of fluid dynamics research and development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Instrumentation in petrochemical industries</span>

Instrumentation is used to monitor and control the process plant in the oil, gas and petrochemical industries. Instrumentation ensures that the plant operates within defined parameters to produce materials of consistent quality and within the required specifications. It also ensures that the plant is operated safely and acts to correct out of tolerance operation and to automatically shut down the plant to prevent hazardous conditions from occurring. Instrumentation comprises sensor elements, signal transmitters, controllers, indicators and alarms, actuated valves, logic circuits and operator interfaces.

Flow conditioning ensures that the "real world" environment closely resembles the "laboratory" environment for proper performance of inferential flowmeters like orifice, turbine, coriolis, ultrasonic etc.

In the petroleum industry, a well test is the execution of a set of planned data acquisition activities. The acquired data is analyzed to broaden the knowledge and increase the understanding of the hydrocarbon properties therein and characteristics of the underground reservoir where the hydrocarbons are trapped.

In the petroleum industry, allocation refers to practices of breaking down measures of quantities of extracted hydrocarbons across various contributing sources. Allocation aids the attribution of ownerships of hydrocarbons as each contributing element to a commingled flow or to a storage of petroleum may have a unique ownership. Contributing sources in this context are typically producing petroleum wells delivering flows of petroleum or flows of natural gas to a commingled flow or storage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slug flow</span>

In fluid mechanics, slug flow in liquid–gas two-phase flow is a type of flow pattern. Lighter, faster moving continuous fluid which contains gas bubbles - pushes along a disperse gas bubble. Pressure oscillations within piping can be caused by slug flow. The word slug usually refers to the heavier, slower moving fluid, but can also be used to refer to the bubbles of the lighter fluid.

Marcia Lynn Huber is an American chemical engineer. She is a researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Huber's research interests include developing models for the thermophysical properties of fluids. She was awarded the Department of Commerce Bronze Medal in 2005.

References

  1. 1 2 "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-11. Retrieved 2010-03-08.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) [Downloaded 3-1-2010]
  2. "Colorado Engineering Experiment Station Inc. - Natural Gas Industry Buyer's Guide" . Retrieved 3 May 2017.
  3. 1 2 http://www.allbusiness.com/mining/support-activities-mining-support-oil/295918-1.html [ dead link ]
  4. "Our Staff" . Retrieved 24 March 2020.
  5. "Quality Assurance" . Retrieved 24 March 2020.
  6. Canada, Government of Canada, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, Office of the Deputy Minister, Small Business, Tourism and Marketplace Services, Measurement (24 October 2011). "G-16—Recognition of test data from gas meter test facilities" . Retrieved 18 December 2016.{{cite web}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. www.flowresearch.com(PDF) https://web.archive.org/web/20110711012211/http://www.flowresearch.com/articles/Pipeline%26Gas7_00.PDF. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-11.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  8. "ISFFM Secretariat" . Retrieved 3 May 2017.
  9. "ISHM" . Retrieved 18 December 2016.
  10. 1 2 "History and Updates" . Retrieved 24 March 2020.