Known for its innovative and accurate liquid-fuel accounting and measure-ment instruments, Liquid Automation Services (LAS) has launched the latest flowmeter calibration technology to South Africa’s petroleum and chemical market.

Regarded as the only flow-meter calibrator of its kind in South Africa, LAS last month demonstrated the LAS small-volume prover (SVP) to some of its major customers.

Developed in the US, the SVP, also known as the piston prover, is reportedly set to revolutionalise the method of fast and accurate calibration of flowmeters in South Africa.

LAS export manager Dave Robinson says that this new apparatus will enable the company to calibrate flowmeters more quickly, accurately and cost-effectively than its competitors, thus saving customers and the company itself overhead expenses.

Provers are used to accurately calibrate a flowmeter to ensure that it conforms with strict legal metrology standards.

If a flowmeter is not correctly calibrated, the owner of the product, such as fuel, is liable to lose product and therefore money by oversupply.

In the past, the company con-ducted calibration of flowmeters using the Prover Can – an instrument that took up valuable space, remained at the gantry for days on end and took precious time to finalise calibration.

Robinson says the Prover Can was labour-intensive to operate.

“In many instances, two operators were required to handle the calibration process, making it an expensive exercise,” he notes.

By using the Prover Can, additional costs also occurred for the driver and the decanting truck at R2 500 an hour.

Due to the lengthy calibration time of about two hours a litre, a large gantry would generally be inaccessible for almost two weeks.

Although the Prover Can had an uncertainty calibration accuracy of 0,05%, Robinson says there was still room for accuracy improvement.

“With the Prover Can, one always had a risk of spillage when filling or draining the test can,” Robinson revealed.

It is believed that the LVP offers the customer a much better calibration accuracy of 0,001%.

With the SVP, the gantry-loading area is also occupied for a fraction of the time, thus allowing normal loading of vehicles to carry on while the proving is in process.

Meters can also be calibrated or proved at a much faster speed during the required three flow rates.

Moreover, the SVP provides the additional benefit of no extra cost usually required for a driver and decanting truck, because no decanting of the product is required, thus also eliminating the risk of any spillage.

The SVP is operated by one person from inside the truck, thus reducing the accident risk on site.

Another big advantage is the SVP’s ability to provide the customer and operator with a detailed meter-analysis trend and historical record of the meter’s performance, whereby predictive maintenance can be done.

According to LAS, research done in Denmark, the home of the cool separation vapour-recovery equipment, has shown that up to 0,7 l of fuel can be lost as a result of the escape of vapour when a 1 000 l vessel is loaded with petroleum products with low viscosity. This uncertainty contributor, however, is avoided when using the SVP for the calibration of meters.

The new LAS prover reportedly is very mobile.

Mounted on a truck, it can move from one location or depot to another as fast as it takes to drive there.

Also, with its lean looks and on-board equipment, the LAS prover only takes a couple of minutes to set up for operation.

“The LAS SVP is capable of doing three calibration runs within a ten-minute period, giving nine slow-flow passes, nine medium-flow passes and nine fast-flow passes,” Robinson notes.

Besides the normal fuel-flow meter calibrations, the SVP can also be used to calibrate LPG, chemicals, coriolis and turbine meters.

At the moment, the company only has one of these piston provers, valued at about R1,4-million, but LAS aftermarket manager Wikus Naud