[labnetwork] Flow Meters and/or Flow Computers for tracking distributed nitrogen usage?

[Grimard, Dennis]

John:

We have exterior labs using our house N2 also.  We use about 7 to 8 MCF per month (yes that is millions of CF).  We measured that the exterior labs were using about a Million CF.  We are now charging them.  We did a simple estimate of their use and came up with about 600, 000 cF without measurements.  Of course, faculty complained.  So we are putting in a totalizer system now that will neater exactly what they are using.  Dennis Schweiger can send you the details.  What we did to estimate the use was tie a standard a-size bottle to each lab and drain it and record the time.  Volume of bottle divided by rime equals use.  We also estimated use by walking through each lab and giving standard values to specific types of equipment (dry pumps, MBE, dry boxes, etc).

Good luck ...

Dennis S Grimard

On Aug 19, 2011, at 6:56 PM, "John Shott" <shott at stanford.edu> wrote:

> Labnetwork:
> 
> Like many facilities, I suspect, we have a single LN2 tank that is used for delivery of gaseous nitrogen to the entire building.  While our shared laboratory is undoubtedly the largest user of that nitrogen, there are also a number of private labs in the building that consume nitrogen.  Because they do not pay for it, however, they have little incentive to conserve nitrogen.  Additionally, because we don't have great metering of our own nitrogen usage, we probably use more than we should in our facility.
> 
> Do any of you have experience with either totalizing flow meters and/or flow computers that can be used for tracking nitrogen flow and usage at 15 or 20 distributed points that end up communicating to a central data collection point?
> 
> Any experience with systems of this type would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> John
> 
> 
> 
> 
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