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The oil and gas industry, along with the chemical and waterand wastewater industries, is one of the largest areas in which flowmeters are used. Both oil and natural gas need to be measured at many points within the process stream that starts with drilling and ends with the delivery of refined products to customers. There is also a need for many other types of instrumentation, including... temperature and pressure transmitters and sensors, analytical equipment, level products and other types of measurement and control equipment. [read more]

Should companies continue to invest in mechanical flow technology or move towards developing non-invasive intelligent sensors? The answer, of course, is they should do both. But the question goes much deeper. Firstly, what is the potential growth in this technology and secondly, how much longer will these mechanical flowmeters be commonplace?

Check valves, unlike isolation valves, have to dynamically respond to flow conditions and deliver long-term, trouble-free performance. The correct selection and sizing of swing check valves based on application and line parameters is vital to system reliability.

As process-based industries continually seek to improve efficiency, reliability and safety, a variety of equipment testing and verification strategies have been introduced. One of them is the use of partial stroke testing (PST) on emergency shut down valves (ESDVs).

The pressure relief of cryogenic (transport) containers is an essential topic in the field of occupational safety. The protection of man and machine is particularly important if an unexpected evaporation occurs due to a collapse of the insulation vacuum, uncontrolled heat rise, or an excessive pressure rise in the inner container, for example, during the filling.

Storage tanks are commonly used to store liquids that have been transferred from ocean-going vessels, and tend to be grouped together in tank farms. From there, the liquids maybe transferred to other vessels or to pipelines on the way to refineries. The measurement of the amount (volume or mass) of liquid in a tank is achieved by a method called tank gauging, with two main recognised assessment... methods. [read more]

By far the most popular automatic, continuous (full measurement range) open channel flow measurement (OCM) approach worldwide remains the use of non-contacting ultrasonic technology, a compact transducer that emits a high frequency sound pulse inaudible to humans. This pulse then reflects from the liquid surface and returns, the time of flight for the echo being converted to a distance. The... transducer can stand alone or form a system with a control unit. [read more]

With no need for compressed air, early electric actuators could operate with less sound and less maintenance than the predominant pneumatic actuator. Of course, the standard pneumatic option offered its own apparent benefits – performance in extreme temperatures, for example, and an elegant simplicity. As a result, the flow control industry has stubbornly clung to pneumatic actuators,... specifically in the US market, for decades. [read more]