Over the past few years, the United States has imported (and exported) about 8.5 million barrels per day of petroleum[1]. Assuming that one barrel is worth $75, (the price of a barrel of crude oil on March 1, 2023), then the amount of petroleum traded by the U.S. comprises a total of roughly 230 billion dollars per year. Assuming these figures, a 1 % error in the measurement of petroleum products equals 2.3 billion dollars on a yearly basis. It is fairly obvious that the accuracy of these measurements is therefore crucial.
To measure the continuous flow of liquid that travels through a production pipeline, a meter is installed in that pipeline. But how do you regularly check the accuracy of the meter without removing the meter, discontinuing the flow of product, or discontinuing the metering process? The answer is a volume displacement prover.
Many petrochemical installations contain a permanent pipe prover. A pipe prover is a volume displacement prover, using a sphere as displacer instead of a piston. In general, pipe provers need a relatively large pipe segment to produce accurate measurement results, and are therefore large installations, not suitable for mobile use. But due to developing technology, small volume provers now form a viable alternative. They are smaller than pipe provers and can therefore be used in a mobile configuration. This makes the Small Volume Prover (SVP) suitable for use by local weights and measures offices.
In February 2023, NIST OWM staff were invited to observe a calibration of a small volume prover by the Michigan Department of Agriculture’s E.C. Heffron state metrology laboratory. The goal was to learn more about the calibration procedures deployed in the state metrology laboratories, and to determine th ..
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