×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Flowmeter for Hydrogen Gas

Flowmeter for Hydrogen Gas

Flowmeter for Hydrogen Gas

(OP)
I am looking for an accurate and precise flowmeter for hydrogen gas. The ranges of operation are: for temperature between 32°F and 248°F; for pressure between 14.7 psia and 600 psia and for flow between 10 in3/min and 12,000 in3/min at STD conditions. Does anyone know of a brand or manufacturer that you could recommend based on your own experience?

I'd be grateful in advance,

dogtop

RE: Flowmeter for Hydrogen Gas

For pure hydrogen, thermal massflow meters are quite good.  Look at Brooks, Horiba, Porter etc.

For impure hydrogen, such that the density varies significantly by virtue of variable composition, you have only one choice- a very expensive coriolis meter- or something else with correction by means of analysis.

RE: Flowmeter for Hydrogen Gas


I used MicroMotion's Coriolis "Elite" model on 99.5% pure Hydrogen gas feed to batch kettle reactors for precision and accurate measurement for over 5 years and never had problems - except at the outset, where we installed them in a vibrating situation that caused accuracy deviations.  This was in 1996 when we first introduced them after many failures with other measuring devices.  Once we went through our "learning curve", everything fell into place and Hydrogen measurements were consistent and accurate as we could hope for.

We actually discovered that the coriolis type meter was far more economical when we added all the costs: capital, installation, operating, maintenance, and accuracy.  We standardized on using these type of meters on all Kettle feeds - not only gases - even down to caustic soda.  We never regretted the investment and felt it paid itself back handsomely with the results.

10 years later, there have been great improvemnts in the instrument - even the introduction of a "straight" tube.  And, I expect, the accuracy has improved even more.  The competition has certainly increased since then - which only shows the success of the applications.  And this tells me the pricing has to much lower than what I paid 10 years ago.  When I made the analysis, I came up with orifice meters being more expensive than the coriolis type - mainly because of the installation, calibration, & maintenance costs and the accuracy loss.

RE: Flowmeter for Hydrogen Gas

(OP)
moltenmetal, Montemayor:

Thanks a lot for your comments and insights. Very useful information.
Regards, dogtop

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources