All Electronic MEMS Flow Meters for City Gas Applications |
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| Liji Huang, ChihChang Chen, Yahong Yao, Gaofeng Wang, Yong Feng, Kaiping Wei, Wenhong Deng, Changming Jiang, Jiliang Ruan, Sugang Jiang |
- Abstract:
- City gas metering has been dominated by diaphragm meters for over a century. In the past 30 years, development of all-electronic meters for better energy management has been pursued by many companies using ultrasonic, thermal time-of- flight, and MEMS calorimetric principles. Installations and trials have been reported but mostly in small quantity. The challenges for such meters come from reliability and cost requirements. While ultrasonic technology has been better developed, the cost and gas composition dependency are often the barrier for the market acceptance. In this paper, we discuss cost effective and battery powered MEMS mass flow meters for city gas applications with the battery life over 5 to 10 years depending on operation conditions. The meters consist of a specially designed MEMS mass flow sensing chip with multiple sensors that offers the capability of large turn-down ratio over 200:1. The package technology enables applications with pipe diameters ranging from 15 to 150 mm, and with an accuracy of ±1.5% or better. The long term reliability including resistance to particle impact and oil/moisture contaminations is ensured by chip design. The meters are ready for various remote communication protocols and the actual installations will also be discussed.
- Keywords:
- MEMS flow meter, City gas, All electronic flow meter
- Download:
- IMEKO-TC9-2010-067.pdf
- DOI:
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