Power generation

The power generation industry could be classified into three distinct areas, burnable, environmental and radioactive and Katronic Technologies have involvement in all of them.

In the more traditional power stations such as oil, gas and coal-fired the interest in clamp-on flowmeters stems from one main area, that of monitoring the progress of water around the site. The advanced nature of the clamp-on sensors available on the KATflow 120 flowmeter allow the instrument to be installed on to pipes up to 400 °C. This is perfect for high-pressure hot water and condensate pipelines, as fitting an inline equivalent would be difficult and because electromagnetic meters do not work on condensate.

Also, as the main water feed pipes for these stations can be very large and were not traditionally metered, a simple retrofit non-invasive system is a quick and simple solution to what could be a difficult and time-consuming problem.

In the nuclear power industry the advantages of a non-invasive flowmeter are obvious. The main application is for cooling flow measurements. The cooling to the reactors is critical to the safe and efficient running of a station and this can be provided by the KF110 or KF120 without the need for pipe modification. Also the portable flowmeter can be used for site survey work to identify problem locations and ensure that there are no potential issues of blockage or pump failure.

Recent developments from the engineers at KATRONIC have also led to the discovery of new applications for the ultrasonic technology on the stator cooling systems. The cooling lines made from flexible PTFE hoses and have little or no straight pipe lengths. It was for this reason that KATRONIC designed a special clamping arrangement to provide reliable measurement under even these difficult circumstances.

The KATflow flowmeters are also used in the more environmentally friendly hydroelectric stations. The clamp-on meters have been used to measure the flows in penstock pipelines that are generally very large and therefore where the use of a more conventional flowmeter would be prohibitively expensive.

Typical Applications:
• Cooling water flows
• Heavy fuel oil metering
• High temperature boiler water metering
• Condensate measurement

Reference Customers:
• British Energy
• E-On
• BNFL
• Siemens Power Generation