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Scotch whisky goes with the flow

An Emerson Process Management - Flow Division product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Mar 26, 2004

Emerson Process Management has installed Micro Motion flow measurement systems for monitoring tanker loading operations for Diageo, at Cambus in Scotland.

Emerson Process Management has installed Micro Motion flow measurement systems for monitoring tanker loading operations for Diageo, at Cambus in Scotland.

In the first year of operation, 52Ml of spirit were measured by the Micro Motion meters at the Cambus site, where the spirit is matured and, many years later, blended to create such brands as Johnnie Walker, J and B Rare and Bell's Scotch Whisky.

Micro Motion CMF300 Elite mass flow systems were installed to improve the efficiency of tanker on- and offloading at this storage and cask filling site.

Replacing the original positive displacement metering systems has allowed increased flow rates on both loading and unloading operations, reducing the time 27kl road tankers spend in the loading bay by almost half, from 1h to 35min.

The meters have been accepted by Customs and Excise authorities after tests demonstrated volume flow measurement accuracies better than 0.1% with the Micro Motion system.

Further Elite flow measurement systems have been installed for process and batch control in the whisky reduction plant, where water is added to spirit to reduce the strength.

In addition to flow measurement, the Micro Motion RFT9739 rack mounted transmitter provides a second output of the alcohol concentration of the spirit, derived from the density and temperature monitoring available with the CMF300 sensor.

As this was previously derived from sample measurements, the Micro Motion units are now providing continuous online monitoring.

With analogue and Hart or Modbus digital data outputs, the measurement can be immediately transmitted to the plant blend control system.

After the first year of operation, a calibration validation exercise was carried out, which showed that the Micro Motion units needed no calibration correction or maintenance.

This is a significant change to the previous experience with PD meters, where some spirits containing "Char", an abrasive, meant that these mechanical meters needed regular maintenance and recalibration.

A further advantage noted with the new system, is that the Micro Motion flow sensors can be blown through, after a batch is completed, to remove all traces of the previous product - important for avoiding any taint to the next batch.

This had not been possible with the previously used mechanical metering systems.

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