At Avanti we teach our new salespeople that if they can get the answers to APPTF, they can always suggest the correct meter for the customer’s needs.  Here is how it works.

Application

What is the customer’s application?  The answer to this question often gives us a number of clues.  If the customer asks for a revenue billing meter for a nursing home, we already know that they need a meter for cold potable water, normal city pressure, ambient temperature and for a varied flow rate.

Product

What is going through the meter?  Is it cold, hot or raw water.  Is it petroleum or chemicals or wastewater.  Is it molasses, liquid sugar or a corrosive acid.  If we know the product going through the meter we can deduce the materials of construction and the design style.

Temperature

What is the temperature of the product going through the meter?  Viscous products or products requiring sanitary quality, may need to run at high temperatures.  Knowing the temperature of the product is important when choosing the materials of construction and the tolerances required when temperature expands or contract moving parts.

Flow Rate

What is the minimum and maximum flow rates going through the meter?  This is certainly one of the most important pieces of information needed as getting this incorrect will cause poor and inaccurate meter readings.  Returning to the earlier nursing home application, if you put a propeller meter with a 10:1 turn down ratio here you would lose low and possibly high flows.  Propeller meters and Pressure Differential meters are used primarily in pump on/pump off applications where Compound and Mag Meters are used where a wide variance in flow rate is required.

The title of this article refers to “sometimes V and V.

Velocity

Velocity and Flow Rate are similar but often times meter rangeability is measured in speed of flow i.e. feet per second.  We sell a mag meter with a flow range of .2 – 32 feet per second.  This means that sometimes velocity is required in matching the correct meter for the application.

Viscosity

In the petroleum and chemical flow metering market, velocity is critically important in determining the ability of the meter to measure the flows.  Knowing the viscosity allows us to de-rate the flow capability to assure we properly size the meter for the application.  Viscosity and Temperature often go together in the sizing calculation.

With the above answers to APPTF and sometimes V and V, Avanti is assured to recommend the right meter for the right need and make our customers happy over and over again.