The importance of accurate water metering in resource management

Water has always been the source of growth and dispute between providers and consumers. Nowadays, water conservation and environmentally friendly technologies are becoming more important, especially in areas where access to water is expensive or restricted. Since water has become a limiting resource for economic development, accurate measurement of consumption is important for both trade and industry. Unfortunately, over time and use, the internal components of a measuring flow meter wear, and the level of metering accuracy drops. This progressive drop in metering accuracy causes 'meter drift'. This paper studies the effect of drift/errors in flow meters used in seawater pumping stations, which are supplying seawater for several refineries and petrochemical plants in Kuwait. The seawater pumped to these consumers is utilised for cooling and process purposes. In such high volume consumer system, a small drift may result in lost revenue due to an under-accounting of the quantity of used water. In such systems, in order to endlessly repair, rebuild or recalibrate all the flow meters a labour intensive and expensive process is required that causes significant down-time too. In the presented research work, a novel mathematical method is presented which provides early detection of flowmeter drift irrespective of type (ultrasonic, magnetic, etc.). This method is designed based on the mathematical models of the system and its process relations. The proposed method works with minimal input data and provides an inexpensive solution to existing measuring systems.