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Coriolis Metering Technology for CO2 Transportation for Carbon Capture and
Storage

Article  in  Energy Procedia · December 2014

DOI: 10.1016/j.egypro.2014.11.295

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Energy Procedia 63 (2014) 2723 – 2726

GHGT-12

Coriolis Metering Technology for CO2 Transportation for Carbon

Capture and Storage
Chih-Wei Lina,*, Ayan Bhattacharjib, George Spicerb, M. Mercedes Maroto-Valera,c
a
Centre for Innovation in Carbon Capture and Storage (CICCS), School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University,
Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK
b
Interconnector (UK) Ltd, 8th Floor, 61 Aldwych, London, WC2B 4AE
c
Institute of Petroleum Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK

Abstract

Highly reliable and accurate Coriolis meters have been proposed for metering carbon dioxide in carbon capture and storage
(CCS) operations to provide accurate flow measurements. However, there is a lack of calibration studies to quantify Coriolis
measurements uncertainty for liquefied CO2. In this study, a first of its kind apparatus was designed, built and used to calibrate an
industrial scale Coriolis meter using CO2 in liquid phase. The standard uncertainty of the meter was evaluated within the
temperature range 290 to 293 K and at pressure 6.5 MPa.

© 2014
© 2013 The
TheAuthors.
Authors.Published
Publishedbyby
Elsevier Ltd.Ltd.
Elsevier This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of GHGT.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of GHGT-12
Keywords: CCS, CO2 metering, Coriolis meter, uncertainty, carbon dioxide

1. Introduction

Over the last two decades, there has been growing public concern [1, 2] about increasing CO2 emissions [1] and the
consequences in terms of climate change. Approximately 26 % of global CO 2 emissions were contributed from
fossil fuel power generation [3, 4]. Therefore, carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) has been proposed as a
short-term solution to significantly reduce CO2 emissions [4]. CO2 captured from power stations will be injected

*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 131 451 3299
E-mail address: c.lin@hw.ac.uk

1876-6102 © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of GHGT-12
doi:10.1016/j.egypro.2014.11.295
2724 Chih-Wei Lin et al. / Energy Procedia 63 (2014) 2723 – 2726

into geological reservoirs to reduce these emissions [5-7]. Unfortunately, CCS has been slow to develop and achieve
commercial success due to a lack of business models. Since accurate flow measurements are required for both
commercial and regulatory purposes, a proven metering technology is required to accelerate CCS
commercialization. Additionally, the UK Advanced Power Generation Technology Forum (APGTF) [8] have clearly
stated that research and development for CO2 accounting is needed to develop techniques for fiscal metering of CO2
with impurities to an accuracy of ±2 % in the gas phase and liquid phases. However, there are no published studies
of accuracy in metering CO2 in liquid phase. Accordingly, in this study, a calibration system was designed and built
to evaluate the uncertainty for metering liquefied CO2.

2. Material and experimental apparatus

A Coriolis meter was selected for this work, as it can directly measure mass and is expected to be hardly affected by
temperature and pressure conditions [9]. The experimental method developed was based on a gravimetric calibration
[10, 11]. Temperature, pressure and flow rate of the tests in this study were at temperature from (290 to 293 K),
pressure at 6.5 MPa and flow conditions between (0.5 and 0.65 L/min). In this study, 99.9995 vol% of certified
supercritical CO2 from BOC was used. A calibration system was designed and built to determine measurement
uncertainty of Coriolis mere using for liquid CO2. A smallest industrial scale Coriolis meter (Krohne, OPTIMASS
6000-S08) with U tubes design was selected to quantify its uncertainty. A pressure transducer (GE, UNIK 5000)
with 0.1 % standard uncertainty and a thermo sensor integrated with Coriolis meter were used to monitor pressure
and temperature during measurements. The calibration system was controlled via a data acquisition unit with data
logged in automatically. Density, temperature and mass/volume flow rate from the Coriolis flow meter were
recorded by A XFC 300 Data logger supplied by Krohne. The mass flow rate recorded by the Coriolis flow meter
during a calibration was compared with that determined by the designed rig.

3. Results and discussion

Two calibration runs were conducted under different flow rates (0.5 and 0.65 L/min), temperature (290 to 293 K)
and pressure at 6.5 MPa. During an experiment, completely constant temperature of the system was difficult to
maintain due to friction heat generated by a piston pump head, leading to temperature fluctuation of 2 K. However,
uncertainties evaluated were hardly affected because measured mass flow based on gravimetric calibration method
is independent of temperature and pressure conditions [9]. Fig. 1 shows typical physical characteristics of the
calibration run at pressure of 6.5 MPa with a pressure fluctuation of ± 0.1 MPa, temperature between (290 and 292
K) and flow rate at 0.5 L/min. In Fig.1, all of densities of CO2 recorded from Coriolis meter in the test runs are
above 800 kg/m3 which indicate the calibration system was successful to remain measured CO2 in liquid phase
without any phase transition during a calibration.

900 0.9
800 0.8
Volume flow rate/(L/min)

700 0.7
density/(kg/m3)

600 0.6
500 0.5
p/bar
T/K

400 0.4
300 0.3
200 0.2
start point end point
100 0.1
0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50
time/s
Fig. 1. CO2 physical parameters (temperature, pressure, volume flow rate and density) of a calibration run 1 recorded by the Coriolis meter
 Chih-Wei Lin et al. / Energy Procedia 63 (2014) 2723 – 2726 2725

The measured error of Coriolis flow meter, u, was calculated using the following equation

(1)

Where Mc is mass flow rate measured from Coriolis meter and mref is mass of CO2 pumped through Coriolis flow
meter recorded by the high precision weight scale. mref is calculated from the equation below

(2)

Where mcylinder is mass of CO2 injected in storage cylinder and mpipeline is mass of CO2 collected in the collection
vessel. The measurement errors, u, are presented in Table 1. The measurement errors obtained in this study are -0.14
% and 0.04 % at temperature from run 1 and run 2, respectively, where 0.025 % is due to the measurement
uncertainty of the weight scale.

Table 1. Operating parameters and uncertainties measured using pure CO2 in this study
Run Temperature (K) Pressure (MPa) flow rate (L/min) Measurement error, u (%)

1 290-292 6.5 ± 0.1 0.5 ± 0.05 0.04 ± 0.029

2 291-293 6.5 ± 0.1 0.65 ± 0.05 -0.14 ± 0.021

4. Conclusions

A calibration system for evaluating measurement uncertainty of a Coriolis meter for liquefied CO 2 has been
designed and built. The physical parameters monitored in the calibration runs indicate that CO2 successfully
remained in the liquid phase without phase transition during a calibration. Accordingly, the system was tested and
validated to be able to determine uncertainty of Coriolis meter using liquefied CO2. The maximum uncertainty
obtained in this study is 0.14 %, being far less than required uncertainty of 2 % stated by APGTF. Further
measurements needed to be conducted over a wide range of temperature and pressure representative of CCS
operation conditions to quantify more reliable, consistent measurement uncertainty of Coriolis meter using in CO2 in
the liquid phase.

5. Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge funding received for Project Comet – Coriolis Metering Technology in CO2
Transportation by pipeline for CCS under the DECC Carbon Capture Storage Innovation Competition .

References

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