Technical Publication Improve Flow Accuracy and Reduce Costs: Putting Smart Flow Conditioning Practices to Work By Don Lundberg, Sr. Engineer Fluid Components International Visit FCI on the Worldwide Web g www.fluidcomponents.com Headquarters g 1755 La Costa Meadows Drive San Marcos, California 92078 USA Phone 760-744-6950 g Toll Free 800-854-1993 g Fax 760-736-6250 European Office g Persephonestraat 3-01 5047 TT Tilburg, The Netherlands Phone 31-13-5159989 g Fax 31-13-5799036 FCI is ISO 9001:2000 and AS9100 certified

Improve Flow Accuracy and Reduce Costs: Putting Smart Flow Conditioning Practices to Work By Don Lundberg, Sr Engineer, Fluid Components International The Problems In a perfect world, every plant would have an instrumentation engineer on staff who is familiar with all the different flow technologies on the market, has experience applying them in multiple processes or industries, enough budget to buy the best equipment, a great maintenance team to do the installation, etc. You can stop reading if you’re working for this company because this article is for the 95 percent of you who make up the...

Improve Flow Accuracy and Reduce Costs: Putting Smart Flow Conditioning Practices to Work By Don Lundberg, Sr Engineer, Fluid Components International Installation Issues FCI Mass Flow Meter One of the most common problems when installing flow instruments, especially flow meters, is an inadequate straight run upstream and downstream from the instrument. Before specifying any flow meter, you must consult the manufacturer’s specification to determine the necessary straight pipe run. Adding elbows, expansions or reductions, and/or or spiral piping in close proximity to instrumentation often further...

Improve Flow Accuracy and Reduce Costs: Putting Smart Flow Conditioning Practices to Work By Don Lundberg, Sr Engineer, Fluid Components International Figure 2. Tube and Elbow Tab-Type Conditioner An elbow flow conditioner also can be configured with the same tab-type flow conditioning technology (Figure 2). Many different processes and different types of flow instruments can benefit from the installation of tab type flow conditioners. At an offshore oil pumping station, for example, the process engineering team needed to add a pump to increase capacity. Elbows feeding into the pump consisted...