Measurement of Oil Consumption by Turbine Flow Meters in Conditions of Wax Deposition

Abstract

Commercial metering of oil is performed at almost all stages of the life cycle, from well production control to the transfer of the produced oil to the end customer. In most cases, special systems for measuring the quantity and quality of commercial oil (SIQO) are used for this. If such a system implements an indirect dynamic measurement method, then a turbine flow meter is most often a means of measuring volumetric flow. Its accuracy depends on many external factors, including wax deposits on the inner surface of the measuring pipeline and on the elements of the flow meter itself. The article investigates the influence of the thickness of the paraffin layer on the error value of the turbine flow meter. It is shown that the decrease in metrological reliability occurs mainly due to the appearance of a paraffin layer in the measuring line itself. It is proposed to determine the timing of the metrological characteristics verification by indirect parameters, in particular, by the change in pressure in the measuring line.