Innovation in natural gas distribution

Being a reliable and proficient partner to the oil and gas industry, SICK has revolutionized the natural gas distribution in the last four years. Before the market launch of the FLOWSIC500 in 2012 it was mainly conventional technologies that were put to use by public utilities and large-scale industrial consumers such as rotary piston and turbine gas meters. Several thousand SICK FLOWSIC500 devices have so far been put to use around the world for natural gas measurement by users hailing from a variety of industries – with success and high customer satisfaction. From the outset, the FLOWSIC500 ultrasonic compact gas flow meter was specifically designed for natural gas distribution applications requiring verified calibration. The development posed new challenges, especially the requirement where the new ultrasonic gas flow meter had to be capable of integration into existing pipework systems without straight inlet or outlet pipes. This is because, in comparison with the large measuring stations bars used by gas transportation firms, the measuring points of the gas distribution companies are very compact and normally do not have sufficiently long and straight sections of pipework.   New avenues in product development In order to keep the gas flow meter as compact as possible, miniaturized, high-frequency ultrasonic transducers made from titanium were developed by SICK in-house. These ensure immunity against background noise and, together with the electronics, bring the underlying low-power concept to fruition. This in turn enables autonomous battery operation with an electrical power consumption of just 0.05 watts. This makes it possible to use the FLOWSIC500 in stations where no external power supply is available.     Instead of arranging the flow conditioning and measuring section in sequence in a straight section of pipe, the SICK development team guided the gas flow from the pipe axis and then back into the pipe axis after … Continue reading →