- Colorado Engineering Experiment Station, Inc.
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Colorado Engineering Experiment Station, Inc. is corporation whose primary business is flow meter calibrations.
Contents
History
Starting in 1951, the "Engineering Experiment Station" was a program run by the University of Colorado designed for small rocket research and development. The facility tested turbine meters for the Naval Ordinance Test Station located in China Lake, California. In 1966, Dr. Tom Arnberg of the Mechanical Engineering Department aided in moving the facility to Nunn, Colorado in order to separate ties with the university. At its new location, which used to be an Atlas nuclear missile silo, the facility was renamed the "Colorado Engineering Experiment Station, Inc." (or "CEESI" for short) and operated as a non-profit research and testing facility until 1986.[1][2][3] In 1986, Walt Seidl and Steve Caldwell purchased the facility and reopened the corporation as a commercial test facility.[1][4] CEESI expanded the Colorado facility with the addition of the Wet Gas Test Facility in 1998 [5] and the Iowa Natural Gas Facility in 1999 [2].
Management and engineering staff
The management and engineering staff includes [6]:
- Steve Caldwell, Chief Executive Officer
- Walter Seidl, Vice President
- Jerry Caldwell, Vice President of Corporate Operations
- Joel Clancy, Vice President of CEESI Ventura High Flow Test Facility
- Tom Kegel, Senior Staff Engineer & Flow Measurement Instructor
- Bill Johansen, P.E., Director of Engineering
- Dr. Richard Steven, Wet Gas Test Facility Director
- Casey Hodges, Engineering Manager
- Eric Hirsch, Lab Manager
- Joshua Kinney, Wet Gas Test Facility Manager
- Eric Harman, Project Specialist & Staff Engineer
- James Beeson IV, Manager of Information Technology
- John Reiner, Measurement Assurance Manager
- David Seidl, Manager of Business Development
- Steven D. Caldwell, Director of Operations
- Donald Kinney, Director of Administration
- Dan Macey, Staff Engineer
- Roger Shaffer, Staff Engineer
- Robert Ganzenmuller, Research and Development
CEESI engineers are members of flow measurement standards committees organized by the AGA (American Gas Association), API (American Petroleum Institute), ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers), and GRI (Gas Research Institute).[7]
Flow meter testing
CEESI has the capability to test a wide range of types of flow meters including turbine, vortex, differential-pressure, Coriolis, magnetic, positive-displacement, cone meter, ultrasonic, as well as a variety of valve types.[2][8]
Accreditations
CEESI offers flow meter calibrations accredited by the National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP code 200377-0), ISO 9001, and ISO/IEC 17025 for specific meter types, fluid types, and line sizes at both the Colorado and Iowa facilities.[8][9]
Iowa natural gas facility
CEESI’s Iowa facility, in Clear Lake[5], it located on a custody transfer location owned by the Northern Border Pipeline Company. This facility flows 1-2 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. The natural gas used for CEESI meter calibrations is diverted from the Northern Border pipeline, then repressurized and returned back into the pipeline after calibrations are completed.[3][4]. The Iowa facility began offering commercial calibrations in April 1999.[5] The first meter calibrated at the Iowa facility was a 12 inch Instromet ultrasonic meter in March 1999.[2] All of the instruments involved in the scale-up were controlled by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) staff and were calibrated using NIST’s quality control processes. This scale-up calibration process is repeated regularly in accordance with NIST quality procedures. Flow meter calibration end users have the option to pay NIST to supervise calibrations; these calibrations qualify as NIST calibrations.[10]
Wet gas test facility
In March 1997, several energy companies formed a wet gas JIP (Joint Industry Project) in an attempt to collectively fund gas metering research. Member companies as well as the Gas Research Institute funded the project for three years. CEESI built the Wet Gas Test Facility in 1998 in order to facilitate this flow meter testing on wet or unprocessed natural gas.[5]
International symposium on fluid flow measurement involvement
The International Symposium on Fluid Flow Measurement (ISFFM) is a conference held every three to four years which focuses on fluid flow measurement.[11] CEESI served as the secretariat for the ISFFM in 1999, 2002, 2006, and 2009.[12]
Flow measurement technical library development
CEESI created the "CEESI Technical Library" in October 2007 which is a web-based collection of documents and references to papers related to fluid flow measurement. Bibliographic references and thousands of papers, available for free in PDF format, were collected and indexed by CEESI. CEESI made agreements with the American School of Gas Measurement Training, American Gas Association, and the Natural Gas Sampling Technology Conference to allow for the downloading of papers on flow measurement topics.[13] CEESI also reached agreements with the International School of Hydrocarbon Measurement (ISHM) to which resulted in ISHM allowing their publications be made available via download through the library [13]. Similarly, the organizers of the International Symposium on Fluid Flow Measurement (the North American Fluid Flow Measurement Council) also granted CEESI permission to allow users of the Flow Measurement Technical Library to download symposium proceedings.[14] CEESI entered into a partnership with the Pipeline Research Council International (also known as "PRCI") in 2008 which allowed the expansion and further development of the library; the library’s name was changed to the “Flow Measurement Technical Library” after this partnership began.[13]
References
- ^ a b http://www.flowconditioner.com/Links.html
- ^ a b c d http://www.flowresearch.com/articles/Control%208_1_00.PDF [Downloaded 3-1-2010]
- ^ a b http://www.oildom.com/PGJ/pgjarchive/archi104.htm
- ^ a b http://www.flowresearch.com/articles/Pipeline&Gas7_00.PDF
- ^ a b c d http://www.allbusiness.com/mining/support-activities-mining-support-oil/295918-1.html
- ^ http://www.ceesi.com/staff.aspx
- ^ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_pwwi/is_200606/ai_n16500845
- ^ a b http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/mc-mc.nsf/eng/lm00037.html
- ^ http://ts.nist.gov/Standards/scopes/2003770.pdf
- ^ http://www.ecalibration.com/news/2007/June/industry.htm
- ^ http://www.isffm.org
- ^ http://www.isffm.org/secretariat.aspx
- ^ a b c http://www.isffm.org/docs/Library_History.pdf [Downloaded 3-3-2010]
- ^ http://www.ishm.info/proceedings.html
External links
Categories:- Companies based in Colorado
- Engineering
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