Page 48: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Dec/Jan 2013)

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Flow measurement

Flowlines gets high-pressure treatment

Scotland’s NEL center will launch a new multiphase fow measurement test facility by year’s end. A second, able to operate at up to 150bar, is under development.

Elaine Maslin paid a visit to learn more.

EL’s laboratories were origi- nally set up in the 1940s,

N as the National Engineering

Laboratory (NEL).

It was one of several large government- funded research laboratories, staffed by scientists and engineers, with a remit to research subjects from early wind tur- bines to control systems.

While the scope of its once-wide range of activities has become more focused, since it was privatized in 1995, and bought by Germany’s TÜV SÜD Group, the research has not stopped.

Flow measurement and fuid mechan- ics are now the main foci for NEL, which holds the UK’s National Standards for

Flow Measurement and is a United

Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) accredited laboratory.

Multiphase metering has been one of its areas of research since the 1980s, and multiphase testing since the 1990s, when the world’s frst traceable calibration facility was developed.

By the end of this year, the center at

East Kilbride, near Glasgow, will launch a new multiphase fow measurement test facility, able to operate at up to 60bar g.

Next year, NEL will start construction of a second multiphase facility, able to operate at guage pressures up to 150 bar.

The upgrades are to meet future demand for higher pressure testing and meters verifcation, because production

Inside NEL’s is moving into deeper waters, says Phil fow measurement facility.

Mark, sales and marketing director, NEL.

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