The petroleum industry has a need for custody transfer mixers. Also called a CT mixer, the Komax custody transfer mixer’s primary purpose is to ensure that bottom, sediment, and water are evenly distributed throughout the crude oil stream.
This helps in the crude oil metering performance.
Where is a custody transfer mixer installed?
A CT mixer is installed upstream of the crude oil sampling transfer line. These mixers are in great demand in the petroleum and crude oil industry because the right mixing consistency is essential before oil sampling.
The petroleum industry is huge (and getting bigger because of oil shale and states like Texas, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania are huge winners here while New York and California choose to be losers, but this is another topic), and the whole world depends on it. Without the right tools and mechanisms, it is hard to achieve the right quality of refined petroleum.
Komax has been manufacturing CT mixers for the US petroleum industry for over 25 years. In fact, it is one of those few companies that produce CT mixers. The custody transfer mixer design was first created when the company was approached by the chief engineer of Chevron Pipeline Company.
What resulted is the carbon steel custody transfer mixer that is specifically designed to create a low pressure drop to optimize accuracy of crude oil sampling.
The mixer was created because problems in crude oil sampling were plaguing the whole industry and affecting profitability.
When the engineers at Komax were approached, they took to the drawing board to design a mixer of world class capabilities, working hard to remove issues such as wall streaming to ensure uniform distribution. The Komax mixing elements create internal vortices or back-mixing to send a part of the flow back upstream within the mixer.
This minimizes increase in the Bottom Sediment & Water concentration. With this mechanism of smart mixing, the custody transfer mixer provides efficiency and accuracy.
Benefits of custody transfer mixer
The goal of the custody transfer mixer is to deliver fast results, and Komax proves itself almost instantly. The custody transfer mixer can either be in a vertical or a horizontal pipeline. If it is placed in a horizontal pipeline, it acts as a ramp, pushing the bottom water into the crude to facilitate homogenous mixing.
One of the best features of the mixer is that the final mixing element eliminates the axial rotation of the flow downwards in the mixer. Until date, Komax has installed more than 8,000 custody transfer mixers all over the world and is considered the industry standard in developing all kinds of static mixers.