Wet gas metering with a horizontally mounted Venturi meter

Abstract

Wet gas metering is becoming an increasingly important problem to the Oil and Gas Industry. The Venturi meter is a favoured device for the metering of the unprocessed wet natural gas production flows. Wet gas is defined here as a two-phase flow with up to 50% of the mass flowing being in the liquid phase. Metering the gas flowrate in a wet gas flow with use of a Venturi meter requires a correction of the meter reading to account for the liquids effect. Currently, most correlations in existence were created for Orifice Plate Meters and are for general two-phase flow. However, due to no Venturi meter correlation being published before 1997 industry was traditionally forced to use these Orifice Plate Meter correlations when faced with a Venturi metering wet gas flows. This paper lists seven correlations, two recent wet gas Venturi correlations and five older Orifice Plate general two-phase flow correlations and compares their performance with new independent data from the NEL Wet Gas Loop with an ISA Controls Ltd. Standard specification six inch Venturi meter of 0.55 beta ratio installed. Finally, a new correlation is offered.