Improving Effectiveness of Flow Measurement by Bypass Method: A Technique Applied to Thermal Mass Flowmeter

Abstract Fluid velocity or flow rate measurement, by flow sampling or bypassing flow from main pipelines, offers several advantages, like reducing the footprint of the flowmeter and avoiding the stoppage of a process during flowmeter repair or replacement. The flow measurement technique could be thermal mass flowmetry, a popular flow measurement method. A major limitation in the bypassing technique is the low flow rate through the bypass pipe resulting in a weak flowmeter thermal signal or reduced sensitivity to flow. This paper describes the usage of a validated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model to investigate several bypass pipe designs to maximize fluid flow rate through the bypass pipes installed on the main pipeline and consequently maximize the thermal signal generated by an elementary thermal mass flowmeter installed on the bypass pipe. Investigations reveal that bypass design modification can improve thermal signal strength by as much as 38% with respect to that obtained in the baseline bypass design.