A pressure reducer is a commonly used device for regulating gas flow in pipelines. This device provides a mechanical constriction in the pipe which reduces the cross sectional flow area and induces a local pressure drop in the flow. A pressure reducer can generate a strong disturbed flow and may induce significant metering errors on flowmeters placed downstream. This paper presents the characterisation of the flow downstream of four pressure reducers used on delivery stations of natural gas and metering errors obtained with a turbine meter placed downstream of the different pressure reducers. The use of flow visualisations combined with velocity measurements give useful information about the complexity of such flows which may combine asymmetric distributions of the velocity with swirl.
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