In 2020, Swinton Technology provided NGG with an upgrade to the existing Sellafield Power Station metering system. The Sellafield Power Station AGI site supplies natural gas to the Fellside Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant.
A reduction in flow rates was required at the Fellside CHP plant, for which the old gas Orifice metering system was not suitable. The intention of this project was to replace the existing Orifice meters with Ultrasonic meters; Swinton Technology engineered a suitable solution for the newly agreed flow rates at Sellafield Power Station.
The metering solution supplied by Swinton Technology meets the ±1.0 % uncertainty requirements. The emissions from the power station fall under Directive 2003/87/EC of the European Parliament regulations; as part of this, there is a requirement to report activity data (fuel gas usage) to particular levels of uncertainty. Swinton Technology’s solution satisfies this requirement.
Overview
The upgraded metering facility at Sellafield Power Station comprises of two new 100% duty USM meter streams, each with a dedicated flow computer. For this project, one new single USM stream flow computer application was developed and loaded into both flow computers, to meet the new USM stream requirements.
A new panel mount Metering Supervisory Computer (MSC), running TruST metering supervisory software was also supplied. The MSC provides metering data handoff to wherever is it needed. For this project, NGG free-issued two flow computers to Swinton Technology, which were then upgraded. The TruST Metering Supervisory Computer is interfaced with the upgraded flow computers via Modbus/TCP. A metering management software was installed on the TruST Industrial PC, acquiring data from TruST and providing live meter stream uncertainty data back to TruST.
Outcomes
Swinton Technology’s engineers provided a technically compliant metering solution to NGG. During the upgrade, there were issues reported regarding the Gas Chromatograph software and its operability on Windows machines. After liaising with Siemens, Swinton Technology were advised of a newer version of GC Portal (GCP) that would be compatible with Windows; Swinton Technology installed the diagnostics software on the TruST PC supplied for the project. A full integration test was performed with the TruST PC, where the TruST GC interface and GCP connections were verified.
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