Originally appeared in:

April 2014, pgs 71-73.

Used with permission.
Project Management
T. GUPTA, Emerson Process Management,
Singapore

Major refinery uses reliable fiscal metering system

Reliance Industries Ltd., ranked 99th on the Fortune 500 delivery and minimize installation cost.
list of the world’s major corporations, operates the largest The 3D models helped Reliance review the desired mea-
refinery and petrochemical complex. Located in Jamnagar, surement solution ahead of time at various stages of the
Gujarat, India (FIG. 1), this refinery processes 1.24 million project. The models allowed Reliance engineers to imple-
bpd (MMbpd) of crude oil. Largely due to this facility, Jam- ment changes to the system design with ease. The models
nagar has emerged as one of the world’s refining hubs. also helped Reliance and the main E&C engineers review
As shown in FIG. 2, this refinery features the world’s larg- the complete bill of materials for manufacturing, and per-
est crude distillation, fluid catalytic cracking, delayed coking form engineering reviews on the general arrangement, stress
and paraxylene (PX) units. The complex involves the opera- analysis, center-of-gravity calculations and compliance to
tion of 50 various processing units to produce PX, ethylene, the API MPMS standards.
polyethylene, polypropylene, transportation fuels (diesel, High-accuracy liquid ultrasonic flowmeters are used on
gasoline and aviation fuels), and many other products. the fiscal metering skids that determine the custody transfer

Moving and measuring crude oil. Crude oil arrives at the Afghanistan
refinery’s all-weather deepsea port, which is capable of re- Pakistan New Delhi
Nepal Bhutan
ceiving all types of oil tankers and vessels. Two 48-in. subsea State of Gujarat
pipelines carry the crude from the port to the refinery. India Bangladesh
Because of various taxes and economic incentives, and Nagpur
the placement of the new refinery in a Special Economic Mumbai
Hyderabad
Jamnagar
Zone (SEZ), the flow of crude oil and refined products
Bay of
must be closely measured at various points, both in the new Bangalore
Chennai Bengal
Arabian Sea
SEZ refinery, and in the old refinery, as shown in FIG. 3. The Sri Lanka
value of the products produced at the Reliance refinery is
about $20 billion (B) annually. So, fiscal (custody) transfer Laccadive Sea

and allocation measurements are crucial. Fiscal transfer flow

measurement errors of 0.2%/yr could cost this refinery $50 FIG. 1. Reliance Industries, India’s largest private company, built the
world’s largest oil refinery in Jamnagar. Consequently, Jamnagar
million. For this and other reasons, 76 flowmetering systems has been nicknamed the “Oil City of India.”
are installed in various locations throughout the refinery to
monitor the flow of incoming crude oil and products within
the refinery, and the outgoing of refined products.1

Modular units. The refinery complex consists of an existing

refinery and a new, connected refinery. Construction of the
new $6 B refinery began in 2005, with 75,000 construction
workers onsite and 7,500 engineers working at eight glob-
al locations. Engineers for the flowmetering systems were
staffed at offices in Singapore and Houston, Texas.1 Con-
struction took only three years, a new benchmark for build-
ing a grassroots refinery of this size and complexity.
As details of the refinery processes were being finalized,
a contract for the flowmetering systems settled on 76 meter-
ing systems with delivery in 12 months. An integrated en-
gineering system process was applied to design the turnkey
metering systems. This method used an automated 3D scale
model based on the approved P&IDs (FIG. 4).2 The meter- FIG. 2. The Reliance refinery in Jamnagar, India, occupies 1,700 acres
and processes 1.24 MMbpd of crude oil.
ing systems were constructed as modular units to expedite
HYDROCARBON PROCESSING APRIL 2014
 Project Management

of all petroleum products, ranging from heavy crude to light transfers between the export refining complex and the ex-
hydrocarbons processed for the export market. Each skid in- isting plant for taxation purposes. These allocation skids
measure refinery intermediates, ranging from low-
lubricity hydrocarbons to heavy intermediates. The
allocation skids include the same basic equipment
Reliance’s Jamnagar refinery uses as the custody transfer skids.
76 flowmetering stations to monitor Both the custody transfer and allocation meter-
ing systems were assembled at a triple ISO-certi-
oil and gas products that are valued fied skid-building facility in Singapore (FIG. 5) and
shipped to the refinery jetty at Jamnagar by bulk
at $20 billion. marine cargo ship.

Proving ultrasonic meters. Ultrasonic flowme-

cluded a flow computer, control valves with advanced digi- ters were selected as the accounting meters because they can
tal valve controllers, vibrating-type density meters, solenoid handle a wide variety of process fluids including white oil,
valves, and pressure and temperature transmitters. The flow black oil, 20 types of crude oils, refinery intermediates and
computers allowed fully automated systems. All flow com- end products. These fluids vary in viscosity from 1 cP to 360
puter measurement data are accessible over the Ethernet cP, and they also vary in temperature.
network; it provides uplinked system redundancy at mul- The complexity of any refinery is defined by its Nelson
tiple levels. Multiple meter runs provide flow measurement Complexity Index (CI). This index is a measure of sec-
hardware redundancy. ondary conversion capacity in comparison to the primary
Similar metering systems are used to measure allocation distillation capacity. It is also an indicator of not only the
investment intensity or cost index of the refinery, but also
the value-added potential of a refinery. Adding up the com-
plexity values assigned to each piece of equipment, including
crude distillation, determines a refinery’s complexity based
on the Nelson CI.
The Nelson CI averages 9.5 for US refiners, and 6.5 for
European refineries. The Jamnagar facility has a CI of 14,
one of the highest in the world. One of the reasons for the
high index value is the refinery’s ability to process 20 differ-
ent crudes, plus intermediates and end products.
Because of the wide variety of incoming crude and outgoing
products, ultrasonic flowmeters were chosen for the metering
stations. To ensure transaction repeatability of 0.05%, master
meters and provers were installed on each metering skid, and
the skids were provided with mobile or fixed-compact provers.
There are five compact provers at the Jamnagar facility.
FIG. 3. Because of tax regulations, flow of crude oil and refined
products must be monitored at several places in the refinery complex.
Proving is done in accordance with API MPMS 4.2, 4.5,
4.8 and 5.8 recommendations. Field proving of master me-
ters is done “in situ,” meaning the prover is placed in series

FIG. 4. A 3D modeling system was used to concurrently design FIG. 5. This fiscal metering skid was assembled in a skid-building
and build the flowmetering skids. facility in Singapore and shipped to the refinery by boat.1

HYDROCARBON PROCESSING APRIL 2014

 Project Management

with the accounting metering system. obtains the density meter factor for the densitometer in situ,
Because the master meter is used to prove the custody and serves as the density prover. Density proving is done in ac-
transfer or the allocation flowmeters, the master meter has cordance with API MPMS, and is particularly critical because
to be proved itself prior to, during or after a transfer, under it is one half of the mass proving equation.
similar operating conditions. This is called “proving the
prover,” and it is done with a compact prover. According to Proven results. All key processing units are operating close
API MPMS, the master meter factor shall be based on at least to, or at, their respective design capacities. The support units
two consecutive proof runs that agree within +/– 0.01%. and utilities are fully operational, and the refinery has been
When used to prove the accounting flowmeters, repeatabil- operating at near 100% capacity with minimal downtime
ity must be ±0.05% over five consecutive proving runs. since it began operation in December 2008.
The old refinery uses ball provers, but compact provers Given the refinery’s unprecedented size and scope, high
were chosen for the new SEZ refinery. The new provers are level of processing complexity, the various system design per-
essentially the same as a ball prover except it has a smaller vol- mutations and combinations, and the requirement to equate
ume—about 20 to 30 times smaller—so its pre-run times can each option according to cost and value—this was a partic-
be as short as 0.1 seconds. Because the prover volume is small, ularly difficult application for flowmetering. More than 100
a series of consecutive prover passes are typically done to con- ultrasonic flowmeters have proven their ability to measure a
stitute a proving run that is equivalent to a ball prover. wide range of fluids across this refinery, and the fiscal meter-
Another benefit is the smaller test measure used for wa- ing skids have met all regulatory requirements.
ter draw than that is required for a conventional ball prover.
NOTES
This creates significant savings in operating expenses and 1
The metering systems from Daniel Measurement and Control, a business unit
time because a water-draw witness is required during a rou- of Emerson Process Management, are installed in various locations around
tine or regulatory test. The compact provers are mobile and the Jamnagar refinery.
can be moved easily from skid to skid, reducing the number 2 Daniel used its 3D modeling system to concurrently design and build 76 flow-
of provers needed, and lowering the cost. metering skids.
In some fiscal or allocation measurement skids where mass
measurements are needed, a double-walled vacuum-sphere TRILOCHAN GUPTA is a director with Daniel Measurement and Control at
pycnometer is used for density proving of the vibrating-type Emerson Process Management, Singapore. He has worked with Emerson for 18
years in a variety of roles in the area of hydrocarbon flow measurement and
density meters. For example, in a propane or butane measure- control. Mr. Gupta holds an honors degree in engineering from the University
ment skid, volume is measured by an ultrasonic flowmeter of Bombay and has contributed more than two dozen publications on a variety
and density is measured by a densitometer. The pycnometer of topics regarding flow measurement and control in peer reviewed journals.

Eprinted and posted with permission to Emerson Process Management from Hydrocarbon Processing
April © 2014 Gulf Publishing Company

For more information, visit: www.daniel.com • www.emersonprocess.com