Development of a Smart Type Small Volume Piston Prover

A smart-type small volume piston prover was developed for calibrating flowmeters used in the field. The prover is composed of a measuring tube, optic detectors, poppet valve, bypass valve and return actuator. It was designed as a smart type: operations and data acquisition are done automatically by a computer. The repeatability and reproducibility of the basic volume determination were within +/- 0.01 % and +/- 0.01 % respectively, which meets American Petroleum Institute(API) requirements. Also, the basic volume determination was estimated as 236.937 L, and its uncertainty was 0.090 L(0.038 %). For a practical demonstration, a turbine flowmeter was calibrated with the developed small volume piston prover. An estimate of the uncertainty of the turbine flowmeter measurement was derived, and the propagation of uncertainty considered. The results show that the small volume prover developed is applicable for calibration of flowmeters for field use.