An Ad-Hoc Low Cost Wireless Sensor Network for Smart Gas Metering

The monitoring of power consumption has become of a great interest in recent years as well as the innovative technologies available to realize Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have experienced a great growth. While smart metering technologies for electric energy are already established, as sensors power supply comes directly from power lines, WSN nodes for gas metering should necessarily be equipped with long life batteries. The presented work describes a new prototypal low cost WSN designed ad hoc for gas smart metering. The network has a star topology: each sensor node can be completely integrated with standard reed relay gas meter, and it is capable to measure the gas consumption. The information is sent to the central node (the Access Point, AP) through an RF links. The sensor nodes have been designed with custom electronics and a proprietary firmware, in order to work with a common 3.6 V lithium battery which is able to ensure a life period of about 10 years for each node. Only the AP must be connected directly to electric power. The AP is connected through the RS-232 interface to a control embedded PC equipped with a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) framework: it stores all the information coming from each node in a coherent database and allows authorized users to check the network status using a web interface. The WSN is self-learning and it is capable to detect new nodes joining the network without altering the normal operative flow. Moreover e-mail and SMS alerts can be activated to alert if a node is disconnected from the network or some problems occur. A first prototype of the WSN has been already tested achieving good results.

2013 Production of China's Shale Gas Reaches 200 Million Cubic Meters and the First Transportation Pipeline Constructed

Results of the global shale gas resources show that minable resources of global shale gas are 187 trillion cubic meters （tern）, of which China accounts for 36 tcm （about 20% of the total amount）, which is mainly distributed in the Sichuan Basin, Yangtze Terrace, and Ordos Basin. From 2009 to 2012, China completed an accumulative number of 129 drilling wells related to shale gas, including 46 investigated vertical wells, 55 exploration wells and 28 evaluation wells, with 2012 production ranging from 25 million cubic meters （mcm） to 30 mcm.

CFD-Aided Investigation of Combined Flow Conditioners for Gas Ultrasonic Flow Meter

Stable and fully developed gas flow field is crucial for realizing accurate measurement of gas ultrasonicflow meter. To reduce the flow field distortion, a flow conditioner is usually used. However, the traditionalmonotype flow conditioner can only improve the flow field distribution partly. The measurement accuracy of thetransit time ultrasonic flow meter is still affected because of its serious flow field distortion in the complex pipelineconditions. In this paper, to further improve the flow field distribution, a combined conditioner is investigated.The combined flow conditioner is composed of fan-shaped section, turbulent mixing cavity, and honeycomb-shapedsection. The effects of fan blade angle and cavity length on the flow field of the DN50 flow meter are studied usingcomputational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. Simulation results indicate that compared with the monotypeconditioner, the combined conditioner has better performance on effectively reducing the swirl and turbulence andproviding more stable and repetitive velocity profiles. Experiments also validate the effectiveness of the combinedconditioner. The flow meter with the combined conditioner has better repeatability of less than 0.2%, which isbetter than those of the monotype conditioners under the same conditions. This work is very useful for accuratemeasurement of gas ultrasonic flow meter, especially for the complex pipeline conditions.

Uncertainty analysis of flow rate measurement for multiphase flow using CFD

The venturi meter has an advantage in its use,because it can measure flow without being much affected by the type of the measured fluid or flow conditions.Hence,it has excellent versatility and is being widely applied in many industries.The flow of a liquid containing air is a representative example of a multiphase flow and exhibits complex flow characteristics.In particular,the greater the gas volume fraction（GVF）,the more inhomogeneous the flow becomes.As a result,using a venturi meter to measure the rate of a flow that has a high GVF generates an error.In this study,the cause of the error occurred in measuring the flow rate for the multiphase flow when using the venturi meter for analysis by CFD.To ensure the reliability of this study,the accuracy of the multiphase flow models for numerical analysis was verified through comparison between the calculated results of numerical analysis and the experimental data.As a result,the Grace model,which is a multiphase flow model established by an experiment with water and air,was confirmed to have the highest reliability.Finally,the characteristics of the internal flow Held about the multiphase flow analysis result generated by applying the Grace model were analyzed to find the cause of the uncertainty occurring when measuring the flow rate of the multiphase flow using the venturi meter.A phase separation phenomenon occurred due to a density difference of water and air inside the venturi,and flow inhomogeneity happened according to the flow velocity difference of each phase.It was confirmed that this flow inhomogeneity increased as the GVF increased due to the uncertainty of the flow measurement.

谈谈燃气计量中的温压补偿

气体对温度、压力条件非常敏感。温压补偿对燃气计量很重要。