Decomposition of livestock waste and other agricultural operations are a major source of methane rich biogas being harvested as fuel gas. Rather than emit greenhouse gases into the environment, modern farm operations invest in a digester system to recover gases and reduce emissions. Recovered gases are used to fuel co-generation engines to power the facility, and often excess power is sold to the local electric power grid. Clean energy development credits (CDM) and certified emission reduction (CER) programs offer additional incentives to implement recovery systems.
In all biogas recovery systems, measuring flow rate is required to ensure effective and efficient operation of the digester process as well as providing tangible evidence of saved emissions in order to receive credits and incentives.
Biogas applications present several challenges in selecting the proper flow meter:
- Low flow sensitivity during start-up, and for seasonal changes which produce lower flow rates
- Temperature compensation for correct readings in varying temperatures
- Calibration for mixed gas composition of methane (CH4) + carbon dioxide (CO2) + trace gases
- Wet, dirty gas with corrosive hydrogen sulfide (H2S) content
Key Criteria For Flow Meter Selection
- Accurate and calibrated for specific biogas composition
- Mass flow measurement (e.g. lbs/hr, kg/day, etc.)
- Low flow sensitivity, as low as 0.3 FPS [0.08 m/s]
- Wide ranging, 100:1 turndown
- Non-clogging, no moving parts for low maintenance
- No added pressure drop
- Approved for safe installation in explosive gas environment – system agency approvals for Division 1 [Zone 1, II2 GD Ex d IIC]
FCI has the product line and more than 20 years of experience with thousands of installations to ensure that you will get the product and installation expertise you need for your application. FCI biogas flow meters combine patented thermal dispersion flow measurement technology, rugged packaging, biogas specific calibrations, simple installation, direct mass flow measurement, no moving parts and unequaled safety approvals on the entire instrument to bring you the most application effective, lowest installed cost and safest biogas flow meter solution.
For line sizes larger than 2.5" [63 mm]
For line sizes 2.0" [51 mm] and smaller