KROHNE provides slick solution for vegetable oil flow

6th February 2004          P-KRO125

One of the UK?s leading speciality vegetable oil refineries is relying on the installation simplicity and accuracy of KROHNE?s revolutionary OPTIMASS Coriolis mass flowmeters to monitor the flow of their products into road tankers.

Karlshamns Ltd in Hull has successfully trialled the new OPTIMASS Series 7000 straight tube flowmeters in its road tanker loading bay for metering refined speciality and blended oils destined for the food and health care industries. The meters have performed with a high degree of accuracy and repeatability, and the refinery has built up a close relationship with KROHNE over the past decade after the flow and level company solved installation problems experienced with flowmeters.

Vegetable oils with a variable loading temperature and a viscosity of between 8cp and 100cp, are pumped from storage tanks at an average mass flowrate of 60 tonnes per hour using centrifugal pumps.  They are routed through two separate pipework systems, and pass through the flowmeters before reaching the loading points.  The OPTIMASS meters send a pulse output to a batch controller to measure the mass of oil being pumped; when the totalised mass flow reaches a predetermined level the batch counter stops the pumps. 

A Karlshamns? spokesman commented; ?In the past, other Coriolis mass flowmeters have always proved difficult to install, with so many restrictive guidelines to follow regarding their position, the lengths of piping required at either end, and how they had to be mounted especially when installing in a limited space.

?Many competitive meters appear to work well in continuous flow situations but rarely fulfil our batch processing demands with the associated start ups and line clearing procedures.  However, with OPTIMASS, KROHNE has produced a Coriolis meter that performs with a higher degree of accuracy than expected.?

The OPTIMASS meters at Karlshamns have been installed directly in a two metre high inverted u-bend to ensure there are no vapour inclusions within the meter during operation, which would have had a detrimental effect on the performance of most previous Coriolis mass flowmeters.  However, the innovative design of the Series 7000, incorporating KROHNE?s ?Adaptive Sensor Technology? (AST), ensures total flexibility of installation plus superb accuracy and repeatability.

The Series 7000 is the first of its kind with wetted parts available in titanium, stainless steel and Hastelloy®, allowing outstanding corrosion resistance.  The OPTIMASS Coriolis mass flowmeter family caters for flow rates from 0.3kg/h up to 560,000kg/h (0.66 - 20,500lbs/min) and offers a complete range of process connections.

For further information on KROHNE products, please visit www.krohne.co.uk
or e-mail: info@krohne.co.uk.