Colorado Engineering Experiment Station, Inc.

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 Ordnance 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. In 1986, Walt Seidl and Steve Caldwell purchased the facility and reopened the corporation as a commercial test facility. CEESI expanded the Colorado facility with the addition of the Wet Gas Test Facility in 1998 and the Iowa Natural Gas Facility in 1999.

Management and engineering staff

The management and engineering staff includes:

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).

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.

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. CEESI is also approved by the Primary Standards Laboratory at Sandia National Laboratories to support calibration of high capacity flow devices.

Iowa natural gas facility

CEESI’s Iowa facility, in Clear Lake, 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 into the pipeline after calibrations are completed. The Iowa facility began offering commercial calibrations in April 1999. The first meter calibrated at the Iowa facility was a 12 inch Instromet ultrasonic meter in March 1999. 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.

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.

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. CEESI served as the secretariat for the ISFFM in 1999, 2002, 2006, 2009, 2012.

CEESI Measurement Solutions, Inc. (CMSI)

In 2011, CEESI's engineering services division and CPL & Associates merged to become CEESI Measurement Solutions, Inc. (CMSI). CMSI's primary focus is to provide analysis and measurement solutions for LAUF (lost-and-unaccounted-for fluids) as both an on-site and off-site.

CEESmaRT

In 2012, CEESI and RT Technical Solutions, L.L.C (RTTS) began work on a new product offering called CEESmaRT. CEESmaRT, which will be available in 2013, is a monitoring system using hardware and software to remotely monitor the performance of ultrasonic meter stations.

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. 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. 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. 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. By 2012, the following organizations/conferences that have allowed their papers to be downloadable by the public through the Flow Measurement Technical Library: International School of Hydrocarbon Measurement, International Symposium on Fluid Flow Measurement, Acadiana Flow Measurement Society, American School of Gas Measurement Technologies, and the Appalachian Gas Measurement Short Course.