NUFLO™ Cone Success Story

Much like the SAGD operations in the Canadian Oil Sands, operators in Bakersfield, Calif., inject wet steam into heavy oil-bearing formations to reduce viscosity and push the oil to recovery wells.

Wet steam is very tough to measure because it is multiphase, which means only a percentage of the media is steam – in this case, approximately 70% – and the rest is water. This creates havoc with traditional differential pressure (DP) measurement devices like the orifice plate or flow nozzle because water tends to gather in front of and behind the restrictions, which can create a faulty DP.

The end user required an accurate steam measurement device that fit into tight piping because of facility design space restrictions. The customer also needed to ensure a specific steam flow rate and pressure for reservoir management and for economic and regulatory reasons.