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Overview

WAG (Water-Alternating-Gas) injection can boost oil recovery from reservoirs, but sometimes at the cost of increased sand production.

One major Norwegian oil company faced with this problem, installed Online Vessel Desanders (OVDs) to remove sand from the separator vessels. To operate the OVDs correctly, the company needed to measure the produced water flowing in thick walled pipes (50mm / 2 inch) on the inlet and outlet of each unit.

Any kind of inline flow meter technology has severe problems on coping with the given conditions inside the pipe. The high amount of sand particles in the water streams are highly erosive to anything inside the pipe - first leading to measurement drift and then to subsequent failure of an inline meter.

The answer was the FLUXUS clamp-on ultrasonic flow measurement system, which can withstand those highly abrasive conditions as it is mounted outside the pipe wall.

Moreover, residing in rugged stainless steel mounting fixtures, the FLUXUS flow meter also has no problem in coping with the demanding and corrosive environments Offshore.

Because of the tremendous success of the measuring system, the company bought 16 FLUXUS hazardous area certified flow meters to monitor the produced water streams on the OVD units.

Advantages

  • No wear and tear on the measurement system - sand erosion on insertion meters belongs to the past
  • No space and weight constraints - the meter is simply clamped onto the pipe during ongoing process operation
  • Accurate measurement of multiphase water/sand mixtures