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Bitumen is one of the heaviest and most viscous products produced in refineries. It is created from “vacuum bottoms,” the asphalt-like residue extracted from the bottom of vacuum distillation columns.

Bitumen is a long chain hydrocarbon molecule and appears to be solid at ambient temperatures. However, bitumen is really a highly viscous liquid and does “flow,” though only very slowly. Heating bitumen causes it to soften and eventually become a runny liquid at high temperature. This property of bitumen, near solid at ambient temperature, but liquid at higher temperature, together with its adhesive and waterproofing qualities, is the reason why bitumen is so useful in construction. Most bituminous coated materials are workable when mixed and applied hot, but on cooling become solid. While bitumen is best known for its extensive use as a binding agent in road asphalt, it is also used in the roofing and carpet industries, as well as for making sheets of corrugated papier-mâché water repellant. Many of its uses require unique hardness properties, so there are many different grades of bitumen produced. Different grades are made at refineries by blowing oxygen through bitumen to make it harder when cold.

The measurement of bitumen flow is notoriously difficult because of high process temperatures and viscosity conditions. Conventional meters are challenged with this measurement and failure is a common problem. Rheonik ET and HT Coriolis mass flow meters are ideally suited for the task:

High temperature ratings to 350°C/662°F
No moving parts to wear
Built-in trace heating jacket options
High intrinsic accuracy and measurement stability, even at larger sizes

Steam purging for cleaning purposes will not damage meter internals, nor will over-temperature conditions. Wildly changing fluid properties caused by small variances in temperature are automatically compensated for. The use of Rheonik Coriolis mass flow meters significantly increases measurement reliability while dramatically reducing the maintenance costs often associated with other meter technologies, such as differential pressure devices and mechanical meters. Product quality and consistency are consequently improved, leading to less waste and rework, and greater plant productivity.

Rheonik meters can be used throughout bitumen process operations for a wide variety of applications:

General process metering
Batching
Blending
Coating
Packaging
Truck and railcar loading.

All Rheonik meters are suitable for hazardous area installation and operation and are simple to implement and use.

The Kemtrak NBP007 measures the amount of suspended solids in a sample using backscattered light. While the use of backscattered light is typically applied to measuring suspended solids, the technique is equally applicable to emulsions, suspensions, dispersions and foams. The suspended phase may be either solids (e.g. calcium carbonate) or two immiscible liquid phases, such as oil in water or gas in a liquid (i.e. foam).

The measurement of backscattered light is also a measurement of turbidity. However, one must be aware of significant differences between backscattered light (180°) and other turbidity measurement technologies such as attenuated light measurement (light passing directly through the sample at 0°), forward-scattered light (typically 10-15°), and side-scattered light (at 90°).

Attenuated, forward, and side-scatter turbidity measurement techniques require light to enter into a sample, be scattered by particulates suspended in that sample and then emitted from the cell where the intensity of light can be measured by one or more photodetectors. As light must pass through the sample before being emitted, it is essential the optical density (i.e. concentration of particulates in the sample) is not too high or no light will be emitted. Such techniques are therefore typically used for low and very low sample concentrations or turbidities (<1% total suspended solids down to 0.0005% or 0.01-4000 FNU/NTU).

Backscatter differs in that the sample is illuminated at the window’s surface, and the light scattered back is measured. Light does not have to pass through the sample before measurement. As the concentration of the sample varies, the amount of light scattered back to the detector will vary, making this measurement technique suitable to measure just about any level of solids, even all the way up to 100%. The lower limit or measurement resolution of backscatter is typically around 0.001% suspended solids or 10 FNU/NTU. Backscattered light measurement can provide a wide dynamic range of measurement for applications where suspended solids levels can vary dramatically.

It should be noted that scattered light measurement is a function of concentration, particle size, and—to a lesser extent—refractive index and color. If you intend to measure concentration using any scattered light measurement technology, then it is essential that particle size is consistent. Samples where the refractive index of the suspended particles and continuous phase are similar will not scatter light—light will pass straight through the sample—and should be avoided (e.g. sweetened condensed milk). In the NBP007, measurement is made in the near infrared (NIR, 850nm and higher) and sample color therefore generally has no influence. However, if the sample is known to be highly colored, the influence of the color should always be checked in advance.

Applying Backscatter Measurements to Real-Life Applications

There are a plethora of applications where an accurate measurement of solids concentration is a real advantage. But measurement in many of these applications has historically been performed with instruments that do not have the dynamic range necessary for the job. A prime example is the measurement of spent yeast slurry in breweries. In large scale breweries, spent yeast is sold for animal feed, providing a revenue stream for the brewery while disposing of a large amount of biomass—a win-win for both the brewery and the processor taking the spent yeast.

However, there is a cost associated with transporting spent yeast in trucks, so it is important that the concentration of yeast in the slurry is high enough for the economics to work out. On the other side, too high a concentration can cause pumping and pipe transport difficulties. A reasonable target for solids concentration is around 50%.

A well-known brewery had implemented spent yeast solids concentration measurement using attenuated light probes. These probes, reading in an arbitrary CU unit, worked to some degree at low levels of solids concentration, but exhibited a nonlinear response to higher levels and quickly became blinded over 20% solids. Furthermore, when they were reading, they exhibited continuous drift. This resulted in several batches of spent yeast leaving the brewery with low solids concentration, and charge backs from the processor. Technicians in the plant tried to remedy the issue and operators attempted to work within the limitations of the system. But eventually, the measurements were abandoned, and the operators reverted to manual measurements when transferring spent yeast.

A Kemtrak NBP007 12mm OD backscatter probe was installed in the same Tuchenhagen VariVent “ball” as the transmission probe using an Exner EXstatic port adapter to improve the measurement and resolve the back charge issues the plant was experiencing. Using the native BU (backscatter unit) readout, the NBP007 provided a linear response to solids concentration changes across the entire range with no baseline drift. The unit was then correlated to actual solids concentration and set up in the DCS system as a live solids concentration measurement. Several years later, it continues to provide accurate and reliable readings of solids concentration, and is used to prompt the addition or removal of water from the spent yeast slurry circulating in the spent yeast loop. Savings to the brewery are estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the time it has been in operation, compared to the costs associated with the previous methods, and additional NBP007s have been installed in the plant where high solids levels are experienced.

A unique benefit of the Kemtrak backscatter (or reflectance) probes is that they will not go blind at any concentration of suspended solids. The output of the Kemtrak NBP007 will continue to increase with sample concentration, ensuring a reliable measurement at any concentration. The NBP007-L (low range) analyzer is recommended for process concentrations up to 10% total solids, while the NBP007-H (high range) analyzer should be used for accurate monitoring of suspended solids exceeding 10%.

The dairy industry makes widespread use of clean-in-place (CIP) systems in plants that process milk and produce yogurt, ice cream, and other milk-based products. CIP systems have revolutionized food production, making it easier and less costly to clean and sterilize manufacturing systems. These systems avoid the need for dismantling, and allow for the capture and reuse of water, detergents, and disinfectants.

But there is still a great deal of room for improvement. Dairy manufacturing facilities are still losing thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars per month from unnecessary product shrinkage, and the excessive consumption of water and cleaning agents.

Clean-in-place systems typically use a combination of timed cycles and turbidity sensors for system cleaning—a process which is often unnecessarily inefficient.

First generation CIP systems relied on timed cycles to ensure the cleanliness of product processing systems. Using predetermined intervals, the system was first rinsed out, then flooded with hot water mixed with detergents and disinfectants circulated through the system, followed by a clean water rinse cycle. However, the efficiency of CIP cycles relies heavily on accurate interface detection within the pipe. In systems where detection is either manual or relies solely upon time, loss of product and water can be costly, and product quality can be compromised.

Installing one or more turbidity sensors in the process pipe system greatly improves the efficiency of each cleaning cycle.

When a CIP cycle starts, there is still product in the line and the initial water rinse is used to push it through the system. A turbidity monitor allowed operators and/or automatic control systems to detect the arrival of the rinse water, signaling the end of the “batch” and helping avoid dilution of product in the pipeline by indicating a divert of the oncoming rinse water to a drain. The rinsing process continued until turbidity dropped to a specified point, indicating that most of the product was removed from the line. The drain was then closed and water containing cleaning agents introduced into the system and recirculated for a predetermined time to complete the wash out of the system pipelines. Finally, the cleaning solution was removed from the system by re-introducing clean water to do a final rinse, again relying on a change in turbidity reading to identify the arrival of the clean water to trigger the closing of valves. Clean water, retained in the lines until production resumed, was pushed out by raw product fed into the system. This water, being totally clean, was diverted to a holding tank for future use until the turbidity sensor ‘saw’ the product arriving, signaling the start of the new batch.

The goal of all of this was to get away from old, strictly time-based cycles, and instead act based upon the actual conditions existing in the pipelines. This had a direct impact on product quality, as product contamination/dilution was reduced, and overall consumer satisfaction in the market heightened.

This approach also helped reduced operating costs as well. Water and product were saved, less energy used for heating water and speed of the operation generally increased. Lastly, wastewater discharge volume was lessened, lowering the load on wastewater treatment and reducing sewer system costs.

The implementation of sensor-based CIP systems has saved dairy product plants vast amounts of money, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. But there’s still room for improvement. Existing turbidity monitor designs on the market can be unreliable, resulting in ruined product, excess water and cleaning solution usage, higher energy costs, and increased waste discharge. Small investments in improving turbidity measurement and reliability in existing plants can result in fast returns for the bottom line.

Existing turbidimeters are often fooled by bubbles and tricks of light in process fluids, fouling measurements.

Traditional turbidimeters are installed into process pipelines so that their sensors emit light out through a flat window into the process stream. The light is then reflected by particulates, back through the process stream and flat window sensor, to the eye of the sensor.

This approach has long been considered to work well enough, as it represents a vast improvement over strictly time-regulated CIP processes. But there’s an inherent flaw with turbidimeters using this design: they often have an optical focus point that is somewhere in the middle of the pipe.

This light is essentially diffracted out into the pipe. As the light travels through the process fluid, it can encounter bubbles, non-homogeneous mixtures, pipe wall reflections, and other disturbances. In fact, bubbles often collect and linger directly on the window surface, as a low-pressure zone forms over the window when fluid is flowing past it. Bubbles collecting on the window in this way disrupt the light beam and impact the resulting measurement. Turbidity indications affected in this way can be noisy and erratic, producing false positives or negatives that the control system and/or operators act upon.

The consequences of this should be obvious: noisy and inaccurate measurements result in the interfaces between product and water/cleaning agent not being detected correctly. Product is contaminated. Water is wasted. More wastewater is discharged. Money is lost. Furthermore, operators lose faith in the instrument and ignore it, reverting instead to manual control of CIP cycles and defeating the object of installing the monitor in the first place.

Exner has introduced a new sensor package in their EXspect 271 turbidity sensor, eliminating this serious measurement flaw, making it perfect for measuring turbidity in milk products.

The EXspect 271 features a unique, patented ball lens over the sensor, which directly interfaces with the process fluid. The surface of the spherical lens is designed to repel bubbles and other disturbances.

The second significant different is the point of focus. Instead of the optical focus point being somewhere in the center of the pipeline, the EXspect 271’s focal point is exactly at the interface point between the process fluid and the surface of the ball lens.

Thus, only the turbidity of the fluid itself is measured—the measurement is not marred by bubbles collecting on the surface of the lens, reflections from the interior of the pipe, or other disturbances.

Because the light beam is focused on the surface of the lens, another key issue is solved—light absorbance. As mentioned previously, competing products focus light on the center of the pipeline. This means that the light encounters a very ‘thick’ cross-section of fluid, and the light beam loses energy as photons are scattered by the fluid. Less of the light beam is reflected, producing a weaker signal from the turbidimeter, indicating that the process fluid is cleaner than is really the case.

The Exner turbidimeter does not have an appreciable light path through the liquid, and thus doesn’t suffer from this issue. The curved shape of the lens also resolves the issue of generating a low-pressure zone, so bubbles and other debris do not ‘stick’ to the lens.

This new turbidimeter design represents a significant step forward for CIP operations producing milk-based products. To learn more about how the Exner EXspect 271 can improve the cost efficiency of your operations, contact South Fork Instruments today.

Assessing a beer—whether as a finished product or at various points in the brewing process—is largely a matter of measuring visual and flavor-based cues. Does it taste right? What color is it? Is it clear? If it’s hazy, is the level of haze such that it signifies a production problem?

Haze is of key concern in beer brewing, as many mass-produced beers are known for their clarity and brightness.

The presence of haze is typical in many traditional beers, such as Hefeweizens and other wheat beers. In addition, hazy IPAs have become increasingly trendy in recent years.

But many brewers and macro-brewers produce bright, filtered beers that are sold in very large volumes throughout vast distribution areas. For these products, ensuring consistency and product recognizability is crucial to maximizing the visual impact of the product, as well as consumer satisfaction.

Measuring Beer Haze with a Turbidimeter — Beer brewing at the macro scale poses serious challenges in ensuring product consistency and quality, including the appropriate level (or lack) of beer haze.

One of the most common forms of haze is “chill haze.” This results from proteins and polyphenols (micronutrients found in vegetables, fruits, and cereals) bonding together to form large particles which reflect light and are thus visible. Chill haze gets its name from the fact that these particles dissolve when the temperature of the beer rises above 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 C).

As long as the particulates are soluble at warmer temperatures, chill haze does not pose a problem. However, if chill haze is left unremedied for long enough, or the particulates oxidize, they will form larger particles which are no longer soluble. The result is a beer which is permanently hazy.

More seriously, haze can be an early sign of an infected beer, compromising the taste of the product.

Visual aesthetics are not the only concern when it comes to haze. Haze can be a sign of a beer batch infected with Brettanomyces (wild yeast), Lactobacillus, Acetobacter aceti, or other unwanted organisms. While most forms of infection don’t pose a health concern, infection can still result in a product with significant off-taste.

For brewers that produce beer in extremely large quantities—or smaller brewers that wish to scale up their production—relying on visual inspection to evaluate beer haze is not feasible. This is especially true when brewing occurs in multiple locations, where the subjectivity of multiple brewmasters inevitably results in inconsistent product.

Turbidimeters offer an objective, automated means of measuring beer haze and ensuring consistency across multiple batches, or in beer produced in multiple locations.

While “haze” is the term most often used to describe the foggy quality of a beer, more generally the opacity of a fluid is defined in terms of “turbidity.”

Turbidity is the measure of the quantity of particles suspended in a fluid. As the number of particles in a fluid increase, they begin to scatter light passing through. This is interpreted by the eye as cloudiness or haziness.

In many day-to-day situations, we unconsciously evaluate the turbidity of fluids we interact with. The water that comes out of your tap typically has very low turbidity—it’s clear—and you don’t think twice about drinking it. But if you were to one day run the tap and found that you had a glassful of cloudy water, you likely be instinctively repulsed by it.

This is because we associate clarity (low turbidity) with purity, and a lack of clarity (high turbidity) with contamination. While turbid water may simply have high mineral content, turbidity can also be a sign of something more sinister, such as bacterial growth.

Haze and turbidity are most often controlled or removed from fluids—including beer—via filtration.

Old school homebrewers may crack an egg in their beer—the egg white is placed in the brew, and as it sinks the albumin acts as a mobile filter—or use some other another fining additive to remove haze from their beer. At a large scale, macro brewers pump beer through large filtration setups to get that desirable polished clarity before going on to storage and/or packaging for sale.

Large scale filtration often uses plate and frame equipment with a filter media. Diatomaceous earth is a classic type of filter media—often encountered in swimming pool equipment—although there are other materials, such as perlite. In more recent times, filtration cartridges have become more popular.

Plate and frame filters consist of vertical plates covered with a filter cloth. In between these plates are frames that alternately are hollow or contain filter media. Beer is pumped into the frames filled with filter media, where the solids that cause haze are trapped. Clear beer flows through the media and cloths into the hollow plates, and out through collection tubes.

But what happens if a cloth fails and allows unfiltered beer to flow through into the clear stream? This can be a costly problem, as the beer may be spoiled or require reprocessing to bring it to specification. Sight glasses on the clear outflowing liquid have traditionally been used to spot when the beer is no longer clear, but these require the constant attention of an operator to ensure all is going well. Furthermore, using a sight glass is a subjective measure. It’s easy to see when a gross failure in the filter has happened. But smaller problems can be easily missed until late in the process.

Turbidimeters offer an objective, quantifiable means of measuring turbidity in beer and other fluids.

Enter turbidimeters. A turbidimeter is essentially an electronic eyeball that stares continuously at the flowing stream and reports the amount of particulate it sees. The output from the turbidimeter is fed into the overall control system in operation and can trigger a warning or alarm when the particulate level surpasses a predetermined setpoint, alerting the operator to attend to the problem. Sophisticated systems will also stop the flow of beer or divert the flow back to its holding tank while the issue is taken care of.

Some care has to be taken when applying turbidimeters to a beer haze application. A turbidimeter must have enough sensitivity to see low levels or particulate in the beer while being stable in operation, resilient to optical fouling, and insensitive to color change. The ideal instrument is a 90° scatter device, for sensitivity, with an NIR light source for color independence, and a scatter to attenuation ratio measurement technique for window fouling tolerance. This approach will deliver readings that correlate well with offline methods. Forward scatter and backscatter instruments can also be used to measure beer haze, but will deliver results that differ from those of standard offline instruments.

In offshore oil and gas fields, deep water developments are producing high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) wells with standard operating conditions that are pushing 20,000 psi (1,378 bar) and 360°F (182°C). In addition, subsea systems are creating exceptionally long pipe runs from wells to gathering points. Some well heads can be as much as 60 miles (100 km) from the platform. High-pressure operation is essential to overcome friction losses within the pipelines.

HPHT wells require the continuous injection of chemicals to avoid production interruptions, but these chemicals are extremely costly.

HPHT wells, like their lower pressure counterparts, are highly susceptible to a wide variety of conditions that can affect production rates and equipment reliability. Such wells require the continuous injection of chemicals to prevent conditions such as hydrate formation, asphaltene/wax buildup, line corrosion, and scaling. Left unchecked, failures will occur, and these can be expensive in terms of both repair/resolution and lost production.

Chemical injection systems (skids) are commonly installed in production facilities in the oil and gas industry. They are used to deliver a customized cocktail of chemicals to prevent and mitigate a wide range of downhole problems that can negatively affect production flow from wells. Production chemicals are expensive and can account for up to 30% of the day-to-day running cost of a production platform. Metering is a vital component of chemical injection systems as it is important to monitor and deliver the right dosage at the lowest possible cost.

Metering for offshore chemical injection systems has traditionally been provided by mechanical gear meters because of high-pressure rating requirements. However, the tight mechanical tolerances within gear meters cause seizure when particulates are present in the flowing chemical stream, making them a highly maintenance-intensive item. Furthermore, internal wear over time creates measurement inaccuracy, even more so with low-viscosity materials, as they will easily pass through the meter where it is worn and not be properly registered.

Given the high cost of chemical usage, there are great advantages to be found with chemical injection system metering solutions that are low maintenance and have no moving parts to wear.

Rheonik meters are ideal for chemical injection applications and are trusted in high-pressure installations around the world.

Rheonik Coriolis mass flow meters offer the right balance between capital investment (CAPEX) and operating costs (OPEX). Key features of Rheonik flow meters include:

The only flow meters with pressure ratings up to 20,000 psi (1,378 bar)
Low flow capabilities down to 0.0004 lbs/min (2 g/min) with exceptional accuracy
Corrosion-resistant wetted material options (316L, SuperDuplex, Hastelloy)
Wide variety of process connections (including autoclave MP and hubs)
Resilient to pump pulsations
Low maintenance due to having no moving parts
Useable in hazardous areas
Supplied with build-in detailed diagnostic capabilities
Cost effective and space efficient

Rheonik meters can currently be found in such subsea applications as:

Production Chemical Injection

Using Rheonik Coriolis flow meters in high pressure production chemical injection systems helps guarantee flow assurance requirements are met in pipeline and process equipment, optimizing processes in production operations. Chemical injection systems deliver flow assurance chemicals into production wells to prevent wax, asphaltene and scale buildup, and to improve flow of oil from the well. In addition to flow assurance, production injection systems also deliver chemicals used to protect and prolong the lifetime of pipelines and associated equipment by reducing and removing undesirable substances that can create failure modes.

Rheonik flow meters are fitted to accurately measure the dosage rates of chemicals such as corrosion inhibitors, biocides, demulsifiers, drag reducing agents, and foam inhibitors.

Produced Water Treatment Chemical Injection

When extracted from the ground, crude oil and natural gas are accompanied by water. The water/oil and water/gas ratio seen from wells gradually increases over the life of the well. The implementation of modern secondary and tertiary recovery processes has also increased water content in recovered fluids.

Chemical injection systems provide a convenient solution for adding chemicals like biocides, antifoam agents, deoilers, demulsifiers, nitrate inhibitors, and (sodium) hypochlorites to treat produced water prior to reinjection into a reservoir. Rheonik flow meters are used in those systems to accurately monitor chemical addition rates on the high-pressure side of the injection pumps, saving wear and tear on what can be expensive and critical components in the system.

Hydrate Control

Gas hydrates are crystalline structures that can form during natural gas extraction. Hydrates attach to the internal surfaces of pipelines and inline equipment, reducing (and eventually blocking) the effective cross-sectional area in flow lines and gas handling equipment. Typical chemicals used to control hydrate formation are methanol, MEG and LDHI / KHI. High-pressure Rheonik meters are available to measure hydrate inhibitors from drip feed rates to full flow rates in 2” lines.

Contact South Fork Instruments today to learn how Rheonik’s high-pressure Coriolis flow meters can drastically reduce your HPHT well operating costs.

From the outside looking in, the Coriolis flow meter industry looks quite diverse, with seemingly dozens of players involved. However, a closer examination reveals that the industry is quite small, largely defined by the innovations of a couple of manufacturers. Other manufacturers ostensibly “choose a side” by emulating the established designs of those industry leaders.

We don’t hide the fact that we only develop measurement solutions based on Rheonik brand Coriolis meters. We hope that by providing some insight into the industry, we can better explain why we choose Rheonik over all others.

TOP 3 CORIOLIS MASS FLOW METER MANUFACTURERS BY MARKET SHARE

Micro Motion / Emerson

Emerson Electric is an enormous international conglomerate which seeks out large projects for which they can package together as many instruments produced by their stable of subsidiaries as possible, to complement their plant control systems.

Micro Motion, founded in the 1970s was one of the first manufacturers of Coriolis flow meters, and in fact invented and patented the bent-tube design which long defined the market. Micro Motion was acquired by Emerson, and at one time controlled 80% or more of the market. However, that share has been eroded over the past decade, as their meters rely on a design that is approaching 50 years in age, and has been since surpassed. Emerson/Micro Motion controls roughly 45% of the Coriolis flow meter market now.

Endress+Hauser (E+H)

Endress+Hauser is a Swiss-based instrumentation conglomerate. A couple decades ago, E+H developed a semi-bent tube design, and specifically sought to leverage this in the development of their Promass instruments. With this new design, they went after a chunk of Emerson’s market share, and were successful in these efforts. They are now the second largest Coriolis flow meter manufacturer in the world. Interestingly, several Micro Motion patents ran out recently and E+H almost immediately released new models that have a Micro Motion-style bent-tube design.

KROHNE

KROHNE is another conglomerate, based in Germany, which develops and supplies instrumentation solutions in a variety of industries. They have made a name for themselves in the Coriolis flow meter industry for their straight-tube designs. Their marketing efforts have made them probably the third-ranking player in the market. However, the design has some shortfalls due to the inherent nature of how the Coriolis effect works (in short, the use of curved tubes helps to magnify the measurement of tube distortion and obtain more accurate measurements, a benefit their straight-tube design lacks). But KROHNE’s meters are quite low in cost, and this has helped them subsume maybe 10% of the global market.

RHEONIK – WHAT MAKES THEM DIFFERENT THAN OTHER CORIOLIS METER MANUFACTURERS?

Rheonik is a standalone company that makes only Coriolis flow meters. Their products cover the full range of needs, from extremely low flow laboratory equipment to massive meters for industrial and petrochemical applications. Because of this specialization, they are also only company innovating new designs alongside investing in improving upon past designs. For instance, they have recently introduced new Coriolis flow meters that can operate in high pressure applications (up to 20,000psi). Past innovations have included high temperature operation and exotic materials of construction, along with great flexibility in process connection sizes and types for demanding niche applications.

In addition, the Rheonik isn’t constrained by the need to adhere to a corporate look and feel. This means that their meter designs can be user intuitive, and housings can be made to fit a specific purpose, rather than being adapted from housings used for other instruments “for cost reasons.”

As you can see in the above descriptions of the companies currently dominating the Coriolis flow meter industry, none of the ‘big names’ are specialists—they are conglomerates invested in many different industries and types of technology. Their mass flow meters are a part of a vast catalog of often unrelated products. The result has been industry-wide stagnation.

These companies can afford to barely squeak out a profit on their meters, but this doesn’t allow or drive them to invest in improving their underlying meter technology. This is evidenced by Siemens—they invested heavily in meter manufacturing, and ultimately sold that capability off when they couldn’t earn back their investment. Micro Motion’s stagnation—and subsequent loss of market share—is also a product of their parent company, Emerson, having to tighten the belt and not invest in their products.

The marketplace is being dominated by falling margins and products which exist to fill a place in a product catalog. With low-cost meters flowing in from China, we expect to see a lot of turmoil and consolidation in this space. Companies entering this market are lured by reports of rising adoption of Coriolis flow technology across all industries and while it is true that Coriolis meter sales is a growing sector, companies who come into the market with me-too products are just not making inroads against the established players. Those who innovate are able to establish themselves in markets where others are not present

Nobody can keep up with or duplicate Rheonik’s efforts, because they can’t afford to. Rheonik Coriolis flow meters are truly unique in terms of their quality and range of applications, and that is why South Fork Instruments relies solely on Rheonik for their mass flow measurement solutions.

But if you’re still curious as to what other companies are currently active in the Coriolis flow meter industry, below you can find brief descriptions of just about every other company in the world that manufactures or markets Coriolis meters.

SECONDARY & TERTIARY CORIOLIS METER MANUFACTURERS

ABB Group

ABB Group is a very large Swiss company operating in multiple fields, including electrical infrastructure, electrical motors and generators, robotics, and more. While their Coriolis flow meters are reasonably priced and known to work well enough, this represents a very small segment of their operations. Consequently, their support is lacking, and their sales network is in flux. Their current meter designs largely duplicate the efforts of Micro Motion and Endress+Hauser.

ALIA Group Inc.

Aliagroup is a 20-year old Indian firm which introduced their line of Coriolis meters around 2018. Initially, their products were copycats of Micro Motion designs, but they have rapidly improved their efforts and are considered perhaps one of the “better” Asian manufacturers of Coriolis meters at the moment. But the quality of their manufacture may be an issue, and support is often spotty at best with Asian manufacturers.

Badger Meter

Badger Meter is a manufacturer of a “me-too” Coriolis meter. Anecdotal information suggests that performance is so-so, but fortunately with a sales volume of near zero, there are very few companies saddled with their products. The company seems to be continually going through a significant amount of internal turmoil, and support for their meters is almost non-existent.

Brooks Instrument

Evidence of the rather intimate nature of this industry, Brooks Instrument is a spinout from Emerson’s Process Management subsidiary. Brooks manufactures the Quantim line of mass flow controllers and meters, which are only designed for very low flow applications. Their presence in the low-flow niche is why Micro Motion opted some years ago to not design low-flow meters in this range.

FMC Technologies Inc. / TechnipFMC

While the FMC Technologies name is still reasonably well known, in 2017 the company merged with Technip S.A., a French engineering company, forming TechnipFMC. FMC does not actually manufacture their own Coriolis meters, but instead rebrands meters manufactured by Endress+Hauser.

Graco

Graco—no relation to the Graco baby products company—is an American fluid-handling systems company that only produces a very limited range of small Coriolis flow meters. Their light investment in meter technology is due to their focus in paint solutions. The majority of their mass flow meters are incorporated into their own equipment.

KOBOLD Instruments

KOBOLD’s product line was previously developed and sold by Heinrichs Messtechnik, which KOBOLD bought out a few years ago. Before that, they did have a relationship with FCI but it’s not thought to have been very successful. Their meters are generally regarded to be at the bottom-end of the Coriolis product spectrum.

Malema

Malema exclusively produces laboratory-type Coriolis flow meters for the semiconductor and biopharmaceutical industries and they don’t play in the process market.

Omega Engineering

Omega is actually a catalog house which sells rebranded Coriolis flow meters made by other manufacturers under their own brand. There is often a fair amount of confusion about their products, as Rheonik prominently markets their ‘Omega tube design,’ and Omega Engineering uses the prefix ‘FMC-’ on their meter models, inviting confusion with FMC Technologies.

OVAL Corporation

OVAL is a Japanese company that manufacturers mechanical gear meters, as well as three models of Coriolis flow meters in varying sizes. While the company has been successful in Asia, they have little to no presence in the Western world. They have made some inroads into the development of high-pressure meters for hydrogen applications, specifically fuel cell car dispensing, but these high-pressure meters have not performed particularly well in the field.

Siemens Process Instrumentation

Despite the sheer enormity of the Siemens—they dwarf even Emerson—Siemens recently divested itself of its Coriolis manufacturing unit. The company invested millions into a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, but could not make inroads into the mass flow meter industry—which really speaks to how impacted the market is, an issue which we will touch upon later.

SmartMeasurement

SmartMeasurement is a Taiwanese company which manufactures knockoffs of Micro Motions’ Coriolis flow meters. While they make cursory attempts to sell their products in the US and Europe, they can only really be found in Asia.

TASI Group – TRICOR/KEM/AW Gear Meters

TASI Group is a consortium of companies involved in measurement, manufacturing, and a variety of other industries. In the American Coriolis flow meter space, the company markets their Tricor brand flow meters with limited success. Their products are of average quality, but there are some mechanical concerns with their designs—in particular how their meter mechanisms have a risk of internal leakage due to the use of pipe connectors inside. But the company has made some efforts at improving their products by acquiring the aforementioned Siemens line of meters.

Yokogawa Electric

Yokogawa is a Japanese electrical engineering company. Their involvement in Coriolis flow meter manufacturing is somewhat limited as their line of products primarily serves to complement their overall product ‘basket’ In support of their DCS control system.