Validate™ Measurement Data Validation

Flow computers are the heart of any measurement system. They perform complex calculations every second of every day, based on data taken from a variety of sources, to accurately determine the amount of product that has passed through the system.

Although the calculations that flow computers perform can be verified and are reliable, there are many other contributing factors that can cause problems with the measurement totals. For example, faulty inputs, missing data or bad setup can all contribute to producing a bad measurement.

But most of the data the flow computer generates is discarded and never looked at due to the magnitude of collecting and managing this quantity of data. Instead, many metering systems tend to just rely on the data produced by the batch, hourly or daily reports, but these reports provide little context as to whether the measured values were good or bad and that the calculated totals are indeed accurate. As the flow computer cannot pick up on these types of problems, all of its data needs to be checked and verified before the measurement tools can be reliably used.

As a result, many measurement problems are missed or are not discovered until it is too late. Picking up problems early not only makes measurements more accurate but could help prevent worse problems that would potentially save millions of dollars and ensuing law suits.

Data Validation

Validate™ is an enterprise-level data validation software solution that applies expert logic to measurement data to highlight issues and bring them to the early attention of a measurement engineer so they can be quickly resolved.

Data Collection

To validate the flow computer data in this way requires high resolution data. Validate™ uses the data that resides in the “data lake” obtained from the field using VIA™.

Measurement Issues

Validate™ checks the metering data on a meter-by-meter basis. It provides a dashboard view for every meter on the system, highlighting those meters where problems have been detected.

Validate™ overlays the issues found over a timeline that graphically shows the impact of the problem, along with when it started and finished. Measurement engineers can switch from a chart view to see the raw data from the flow computer in a spreadsheet style view. This data is summarised so that it fits comfortably on the user’s screen without scrolling; of course the user can still zoom in to see secondly data and export this data in full as an Excel spreadsheet for external manipulation.

Once the measurement engineer has identified the cause of a problem, they can use the the built-in tools to quickly update the bad or missing data using a fully regimented process. This includes allowing the user to manually enter the results, copy from another time or field, copy from another meter run, and interpolate the start and end points etc. Every update to the data is recorded and the original flow computer data is maintained at all times for reference and full traceability.

Mismeasurements

When the update is complete, the affected daily totals are recalculated and a detailed report is generated that clearly demonstrates the scope of the mismeasurement and the fix.

The validated data is made available to the management and signed off. The verified data can then be sent to hydrocarbon accounting for immediate processing with the knowledge that the totals have been checked and are accurate.

Validating every meter, every day means that issues are picked up and resolved quickly, removing the scramble to complete at month end. It also ensures that best practice is being followed in a rigorously controlled way and that the measurement data produced is robust, accurate and fully defendable all the way back to the flow computer.