China-made flow meter to replace foreign version for oil, gas fields

China has successfully developed an underwater wet gas flow meter that is expected to replace imported ones in the development of deep sea oil and gas fields, its developer said.

Tianjin University’s School of Electrical and Information Engineering said the underwater wet gas flow meter is the world’s first to use ultrasonic technology.

China will no longer be dependent on foreign underwater flow meters after the domestically-made one is used in two years, Xu Ying, head of the flow meter’s development team, told the Global Times.

The meter is crucial to developing deep sea oil gas fields. When extracting oil and gas, they are usually mixed together. The volume of the mixed wet gas must be measured in real time by a flow meter to avoid overflowing caused by low pressure, and to prolong the fields’ service life, Xu said.

It is important for China to master related technologies, as about half of the world’s oil and gas resources will come from the ocean in the future, Science and Technology Daily reported Tuesday.

Compared to foreign products, which are based on gamma ray technology, the new domestic product is based on ultrasonic technology, which will considerably reduce costs, Xu said.

She added that foreign products usually cost Chinese buyers a few million dollars per unit to import, but the domestic one is expected to only cost about $500,000.

Although the technology behind the flow meter is different, it’s functionally the same and the quality is comparable to imported ones, Xu said.