If you work with industrial piping or oil and gas piping, you may have heard the term flow control plating or orifice plating. It seems like an unusual term, but it fits with what these highly useful plates do.
Table of Contents
What Is Orifice Plating?
Orifice plates are very simple devices that measure the rate at which liquid flows through the pipe. This allows workers to gauge and predict any flow control problems from warehouse pipes to gas pipelines stretching miles. These plates are integral to normal industrial piping applications. Without one, it isn’t easy to calculate the rate of flow through a particular pipe.
How Do They Work?
One of these plates is put inside a fluid-carrying pipe where the flow needs to be measured, usually between two flanges. The plate drops the pressure in the pipe, creating a situation where the flow rate varies. Then the drop is measured to calculate the flow rate.
What Does an Orifice Plate Look Like?
Although these plates only come in one shape, round, they come in many sizes. These sizes can range from tiny suiting small plumbing to massive useful for large pipelines that carry fluid over a long distance. They all have an aperture or hole in the center, and these holes vary depending on the flow being measured and the size of the pipeline.
What Types of Plates Are There?
There are a few types of orifice plating systems. These are:
- Eccentric Orifice Plate
- Concentric Orifice Plate
- Quadrant Edge Orifice Plate
- Segment Orifice Plate
Which plate an engineer uses depends on what type, size and style fluid they are measuring. Each type has a specific purpose.
These plates come in all sorts of sizes. Almost every pipe can be outfitted with one and are extremely useful in various flow measurements. They help engineers accurately measure the flow of fluid through any pipe.
Read also: 7 Things to Consider Before You Begin Zeroscaping