BP America placed a $1.1 million order for flow meters from GE Sensing & Inspection Technologies. As global energy demand prompts refiners, such as BP, to increase refining capacity and maximize the production of distillates, they are expanding and building new delayed coker units. GE’s flow meters will be used to monitor 36 critical flow points for a new coker unit being built as part of BP Whiting’s multi-billion dollar refinery expansion.

Coker units are a critical part of the distillation process and are used to break down crude oil. Flow meters are used to help ensure the highest optimization and productivity of the distillation process.

“With the strong push on building and upgrading delayed coking units in refineries, particularly those in the US, Canada, India, and Eastern Europe, refiners are choosing ultrasonic flow meters for coker furnace feed flow in new construction to avoid problematic furnace tube clogging and to help optimize their operations,” said Ashish Bhandari, product general manager for Flow at GE Sensing & Inspection Technologies.

The coker unit at BP Whiting is being developed on the Foster Wheeler process design. BP and Foster Wheeler requested maintenance free flow meters that offer high repeatability, allowing for advanced unit optimization. GE’s flow meter solutions offer extremely high availability, virtually no pressure drop and better than 0.5% repeatability at temperatures up to 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ultrasonic flow meters, like GE’s Bundled Waveguide Technology, operate in very hot, high pressure, and hostile environments inside the pipe. Unlike other technologies that have difficulty operating in these volatile conditions, ultrasonic flow meters provide operations with the confidence and reliability needed to reduce unit cycle times, which enables significant increases in production rates.