Case Study #01 - Paddle Meter Performance
APPLICATION: Water Injection
SERVICE CONDITIONS: scaling deposits, saline (<80 ppm chlorides), acids, H2S, sand and debris
Challenge:
Produced water injection can boost oil recovery from depleted reservoirs. It can also cause gas breakout conditions – the development of large gas pockets along the surface of liquid hydrocarbons. Gas breakouts can wreak havoc with flow meters.
Back in 2016, Enerplus team lead, Norm Glover, was fed up with the performance he was getting from flow meters that couldn’t stand up to breakout conditions and lasted less than four months. “Every time you got an expansive bubble of gas, the turbine on the flow meters spun like crazy, loaded up the axle and blew out the bearing,” says Glover. He took a colleague’s advice and contacted Sur-Flo.
Sur-Flo's Solution:
Sur-Flo’s unique paddle meter design is engineered so that wearing parts are out of he direct path of the fluid. This makes the SF1015 incredibly durable, even in gas breakout situations. Glover says his Sur-Flo meters have lasted up to two years – about six times the lifespan of his conventional meters.
Glover also likes that Sur-Flo offers custom spooling options for pump retrofits and design solutions like backer bars to add structural integrity (see photo below). “Anyone that asks, I tell them about Sur-Flo,” says Glover. Anytime we change out meters, we change to Sur-Flo. The word is out.”