Water cut affects the budget on many levels
- 15/11/2021
Water cut monitoring is a pivotal element in evaluating the quality of oil exchanged between refineries and suppliers. The evaluation of the water cut can be performed in many ways, but because drifting and inconsistencies in water cut measurement can be expensive for all parties involved, trustworthiness of the instrumentation used is paramount: not only must it perform well when new, but continue to deliver accurate results over the ensuing months and years.
A few years ago one of the world’s leading oil companies realised that their water cut instrumentation drifted by up to 20% per year, resulting in the need to allocate 1,400 hours for calibration and false alarms each year. Though the calibration could be performed by internal service technicians, it was costly, time consuming, and took them away from other tasks.
When measuring the water cut, consideration should be made whether to perform measurements with internal instrumentation, or to send samples to an external lab for evaluation.
MANUAL SAMPLING OF WATER IN OIL VS CONTINUOUS MEASUREMENT
Collecting samples from the process for external laboratory analysis is common and may be necessary, and the quality of the measurement performed in a lab is undoubtedly very high. However, the working hours spent on collecting samples, and the expense for lab tests should be compared to the one-time cost of continuous measurement performed by a water cut meter that constantly monitors the water cut as the oil passes by the sensor.
Source: tankstoragemag.com