The largest water consumers a utility has are comprised of commercial and industrial businesses that rely on dependable water access to operate. These users not only require accurate measurement of their consumption but look for reliable solutions that can be easily installed and maintained, ensuring that there is minimal downtime, while ensuring health and safety regulations are maintained.
When meters become larger in size, their overall weight and unwieldy flange connections, often ensure that the installation will require a minimum of two people or require a specialist hoist so it can be safely fitted without damage to the meter body or injury to the technicians fitting it. Often these installations may be in tight and awkward locations, or in the case of water network District Metering Area (DMA) applications, outdoors in an underground pit or access chamber.
All these factors make the installation of large meters particularly cumbersome.
To date, the latest generation of battery-powered ultrasonic static meters available to the market have been single-bodied, making large size meters difficult to install and at a significant cost, often requiring safety assessments and specialist safety equipment.
During the development of the larger size (DN150 and above) generation of Cordonel®, Xylem engineers calculated that given the fluid properties of water and the larger diameter of pipes, that a rounded-rectangular shaped measurement tube, could provide them same excellent accuracy, performance and U0D0 as the smaller Cordonel® devices, but with the added advantage that it enabled the whole measurement assembly to be removable with just a few easily accessible bolts.
Figure 2: 3D drawing of removable measuring insert of Cordonel DNN150
Splitting the meter into two separate assemblies offers significant advantages, making it much simpler to install. It also has the added advantage that should it be necessary to remove the insert, for example for additional testing, or to provide access to the pipework and valves both upstream and downstream, then this could be done much more quickly and efficiently than having to remove a single-bodied meter, incorporating the flange plates and measuring tube as a single, heavy unit.
Removable measurement inserts have been available with mechanical meters, such as Xylem’s Sensus MeiStream® family, where they were used to perform maintenance on the turbines and bearings if required. Cordonel® meters contain no moving parts and have an estimated lifetime of 20 years. The measurement insert capability does not affect this, it simply adds additional flexibility and functionality.
The meter is part of the wider system, and providing a removable measurement insert offers many additional benefits, including:
- Significant cost savings during installation, inspection and recalibration checks, byreducing dependence on multiple technicians and/or equipment to handle andinstall it
- Simpler and safer to install in restricted spaces and external locations
- Shorter downtime for maintenance/inspection
- Easy access to upstream and downstream pipework
- Increased flexibility
All this has been achieved without compromising on any of the industry leading capabilities of the Cordonel® meter range. “We have listened to the needs of our customers. By providing this unique capability and additional flexibility, we are making it much simpler for major water consumers to install large water meters safely and maintain their infrastructure more cost effectively.” Berry Drijsen, Senior Director Marketing – Smart Metering International, Xylem. Cordonel® DN150 applications
This meter can be utilised in many applications, including:
• Advanced Metering Infrastructure and Automated Meter Reading data
• Precise high and low water flow measurement due to its R1000 range
• Leak detection through its communications and alarm capabilities
• Control and measurement for industrial processes via its output module
• Rich data for District Metered Area (DMA) applications
• Pressure and temperature monitoring
The Cordonel® DN150 is available since April 2025, with DN200 and DN300 sizes expect to be rolled out over the following year.
