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Jetting Behavior of Perforated Plate Flow Conditioners
A study was conducted to determine the presence of jetting downstream of a perforated plate flow conditioner in an 8 inch pipe flowing high pressure natural gas. This is of significance for ultrasonic meter operators following the installation guidelines of the AGA-9 Standard, and who may operate over a wide flow velocity range. A double-blind CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) model was created for the three different test configurations.
Key Results
The CFD modeling results showed good agreement with experimental data, thus providing greater assurance that operators can employ CFD results for flow conditioning with greater confidence.
Perforated plate flow conditioners have long been known to re-establish ideal velocity profiles in piping systems. AGA Report No. 9 established a minimum recommended distance of 10 pipe diameters (10D) between upstream flow conditioners and the inlet to ultrasonic meters. Reduced ultrasonic meter uncertainties have raised questions about the adequacy of this distance, and whether localized jetting from the perforated plate flow conditioners persists beyond the 10D distance and thus distorts meter performance. The project characterized well the flow behavior downstream of the plate, over a very large flow range from 10 fps to 110 fps.