I’m wanting to add a fuel totalizer in line with the fuel supply on our heavy equipment to make it easier to submit for fuel tax refunds and identify fuel theft.
The headache is fuel consumption can range from 0.25gph to 10gph. Totalizers I can find can’t measure anything below 18gph. Any suggestions on where to find the right part, or if I should try another approach?
Comments
I believe so, I had some on a boat I owned, although they were long broken by the time I owned it. Are you sure the one you are looking at doesn’t simply max out at 18 gph, and does in fact provide decent accuracy down to 1 (or less) gph?
I used to work in pharma and plenty of flow meters went down to that range but probably overkill $$$ wise. Could also consider using a peristaltic pump, they have very consistent low flow pumping that can be totalized based on revolutions of the motor, they have to be calibrated regularly though.
I looked into low-flow flow meters for water just the other day
$10k is not outside the realm of possibility
It was a Coriolis or Corona sensor or something like that
Good luck
Dang, .25gph is really low. Adding restrictions to the fuel supply lines to the engine will probably have undesired consequences; fuel systems are carefully designed and shouldn’t be altered at random. And you’re sure your equipment doesn’t have fuel return to the tank? A lot of large diesels send more fuel to the engine than actually gets injected, with the extra fuel used for cooling/lubricating the injectors/pumps before returning to the tank. If that’s the case, a flow meter on the supply line would be wildly inaccurate. Are your engines electronically controlled? You maybe be able to tap into the Engine Control Module to get totals.
The ones intended for airplanes reliably measure 3-4 GPH, but probably not 1/4 GPH.
Access control via swipe card at the fuel source to get the pump to operate and only one totalizer at the source.
Never seen that done on the equipment and wouldn’t want to try. The most I’ve seen is battery digital flow meters inline with nozzle for the fuel truck or tank that fills the equipment. Log each fill up with equipment hours. Check equipment hours and flow meter totalizer each month to make sure things add up. You will find it if someone is stealing.
Edit to add: use tamper lacquer pen from Markal or similar to prevent tampering with fittings, ports, etc. that might allow bypass of metering.