The performance characteristics of a novel multi-electrode electromagnetic flowmeter

Abstract The design of a novel multi-electrode electromagnetic flowmeter, which provides nine conventional electromagnetic flowmeters housed in a single body, has been used in adverse flow conditions immediately downstream from a header tank. The results show that careful initial calibration, in accord with the pipeline conditions recommended in international standards, enables errors of under 1% to be achieved. The results show that the two electrode planes closest to the header provide results with the greatest errors. The performance with the electrodes mounted in the vertical plane is generally better than that achieved with the electrodes mounted in the horizontal plane. Pressure measurements together with laser Doppler anemometry (LDA) and particle image velocimetry (PIV) techniques have been used to provide details of the magnitude of the disturbance caused to the flow field by the header and outflow combination.