Establishment and verification of a primary low-pressure gas flow standard at NIMT

This paper presents the establishment and verification of a primary low-pressure gas flow standard with the capacity of 0.005 L/min to 24 L/min (at 23 °C and 101.325 kPa), newly established at National Institute of Metrology of Thailand (NIMT). This facility is a mercury-sealed piston prover consisting of three precision-machined glass cylinders. Flow measurement can be carried out manually or semi-automatically. The electronics were installed in a separate console to minimize their thermal impact on the gas temperature. Special care was taken in designing the facility to ensure sound and representative gas pressure and temperature measurement. The relative expanded uncertainty of mass flow measurement was evaluated to be less than 0.13%. To verify the measurement capability and performance of the new facility, a bilateral comparison with the piston prover at Center for Measurement Standards (CMS), Taiwan was conducted. The transfer standard used was a set of three critical flow venturis with dedicated thermometers. Eight flow rates of dry air ranging from 42 mL/min to 14.5 L/ min at 0 °C and 101.325 kPa (0.055 g/min to 18.87 g/min) were tested. Comparison results showed that the En values for the flow measurements at NIMT with reference to CMS were all well less than unity, demonstrating good agreement between the two participants.