V-Cone Flow Meter Withstands Corrosion In Harsh Industrial Liquid, Steam or Gas Processes

Process engineers looking for a reliable solution to measuring liquids, steam or gases in harsh environments will find McCrometer’s (USA) new Corrosion-Resistant V-Cone® Flow Meter is designed for high accuracy measurement with virtually no maintenance and long life under the most challenging conditions.

Prolonged equipment exposure to water, acids, fuels, solvents, high temperatures and high pressures creates a constant corrosion problem in many process industry plants. Ammonia, chlorine, cyanide, hydrochloric acid, hydrogen sulphide, methane and other harsh substances cause corrosion that requires extra maintenance or reduces the life of instrumentation, pumps, valves and piping. Corrosion-related maintenance activity shrinks plant product throughput and increases operating costs.

The V-Cone Flow Meter not only provides precise flow measurement in liquid, steam or gas media, but it also requires virtually no maintenance in the most demanding processes where corrosive conditions exist. It is ideal for use in a wide range of industries that include chemical, electric power generation, food/beverage, oil/gas production and refining, pharmaceutical, pulp/paper and more.

The design of McCrometer’s V-Cone Flow Meter is based on advanced differential pressure technology and requires no-moving parts, which may break due to corrosion or clog during use. Built-in flow conditioning allows the V-Cone Flow Meter to achieve measurement accuracy of +0.5%, with a repeatability of +0.1.  It operates over a flow range of 10:1 and services line sizes from 0.5 to 120 inches.

The V-Cone Flow Meter is available in standard configurations that may be specified with either stainless steel or carbon steel materials. It can now also be constructed from a wide range of other materials to meet specific plant operating and maintenance requirements. Optional materials that are available include: Hastelloy C-276, Duplex 2205, Chromeloy P22/P11, Monel K400/K500, Inconel 625 and many more.

With its unique ability to self-condition flow, the V-Cone Chem Flow Meter is also a real space-saver, eliminating the need for up/down stream straight pipe runs required by other DP technologies, such as orifice plates and Venturi tubes. It can be installed virtually anywhere in a piping system or be easily retrofit into an existing piping layout, resulting in significant installation flexibility and initial cost savings.

Unlike traditional DP instruments such as orifice plates and Venturi tubes, the
V-Cone Flow Meter’s design is inherently more accurate because the flow conditioning function is built-into the basic flow sensor design. The V-Cone conditions fluid flow to provide a stable flow profile that increases accuracy. The flow sensor‘s design features a centrally-located cone inside a tube. The cone interacts with the fluid flow and reshapes the velocity profile to create a lower pressure region immediately downstream. 

The pressure difference, which is exhibited between the static line pressure and the low pressure created downstream of the cone, can be measured via two pressure sensing taps. One tap is placed slightly upstream of the cone and the other is located in the downstream face of the cone itself. The pressure difference can then be incorporated into a derivation of the Bernoulli equation to determine the fluid flow rate.