This paper demonstrates a non-invasive pipeline pressure monitoring using intrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometer (IFPI) fiber optic sensors. Fiber sensors installed outside the pipe can achieve 2% pressure measurement accuracy from 15 psi to 1000 psi.

This project evaluated current end treatment designs that are used in the natural gas industry and used Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to determine the end treatment with the best flow characteristics when installed upstream from an ultrasonic flow meter. The project team optimized the end treatment design and additional CFD and experimental testing was conducted. The experimental results of the developed end treatment were shown to provide results within �0.25% relative to the baseline configuration with various inlet conditions and numbers of ultrasonic paths.

This project provides a summary of test data based on the flow disturbance tests that are outlined in Annex B of the International Organization of Legal Metrology (OIML) R 137-1. The data that are included in this report are for multipath gas ultrasonic flow meters. The flow meter manufacturers provided all of the data that are presented in this report.

This project provided additional data analysis and data processing techniques to a data set that was collected under the previous MEAS-6-17A project. The goal of this project was to reduce the bias in the flow verification data and improve the repeatability of the results. The project was successful, as all of the methods developed on this project resulted in an average error better than �0.05% with a standard deviation of less than 1.1% for the longest injection length, which was a significant improvement from the previous MEAS-6-17A project.

This project provided a proof of concept for an in-situ verification method for ultrasonic flow meters in natural gas service. The tested method consisted of simultaneously injecting helium in a minimum of two locations upstream from an ultrasonic flow meter at a known distance apart. The results from this project showed the flow verification method was successful in determining the gas velocity through an ultrasonic flow meter to within �5%. These results indicate that the tested in-situ verification method is not accurate enough to replace a laboratory flow calibration, but could be used as a field diagnostic tool. The accuracy of the results and the scatter in the data were correlated to the distance between the injection points.