McCrometer Wafer Cone: compact flow metering in mining plants explained for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on Australian Mining
30 Second Briefing
McCrometer’s Wafer Cone flow meter is being promoted as a low-cost, no-maintenance solution for gas and liquid measurement, designed as a fast-change replacement for traditional differential-pressure meters in mining plants. The wafer-style cone element fits between standard flanges, eliminating long upstream and downstream straight runs typically required for orifice plates and Venturi tubes, which is useful in congested pipe racks and brownfield process lines. For plant engineers, the compact geometry and drop-in installation can simplify retrofits on slurry services, reagent dosing lines, and compressed air circuits while limiting shutdown time.
Technical Brief
- Wafer Cone uses a concentric cone obstruction to generate a stable differential-pressure signal.
- Meter body is wafer-style, clamped between existing flanges without additional spool pieces.
- Cone geometry conditions flow, reducing sensitivity to upstream elbows, valves and disturbed velocity profiles.
- Differential pressure is typically transmitted via standard impulse lines to existing DP transmitters.
- No moving parts in the primary element remove routine lubrication, bearing checks and mechanical wear inspections.
- Compact face-to-face dimension reduces meter weight, easing manual handling in elevated pipe racks.
- Cone element’s streamlined profile improves turndown compared with sharp-edged orifice plates at low Reynolds numbers.
- For brownfield plants, such drop-in DP elements can defer costly pipework re-routing or rack expansion.
Our Take
Among the 893 Mining stories in our coverage, relatively few Product-tagged pieces focus on flow measurement hardware, so AMS and McCrometer’s gas and liquid metering solutions sit in a more specialised niche than the usual drilling or mobile plant products.
For Australia-based Projects content, most instrumentation coverage has centred on process control and digital optimisation; adding physical metering hardware here signals operators are looking for straightforward, low-maintenance ways to tighten mass-balance and billing accuracy without large automation overhauls.
Because this item is Product- and Projects-tagged rather than tied to a specific mine, it is likely targeting brownfield retrofits across multiple Australian operations, where incremental metering upgrades can be justified from reduced water, reagent, or fuel losses rather than from new-project capex budgets.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
Related Articles
Related Industries & Products
Mining
Geotechnical software solutions for mining operations including CMRR analysis, hydrogeological testing, and data management.
CMRR-io
Streamline coal mine roof stability assessments with our cloud-based CMRR software featuring automated calculations, multi-scenario analysis, and collaborative workflows.
HYDROGEO-io
Comprehensive hydrogeological testing platform for managing, analysing, and reporting on packer tests, lugeon values, and hydraulic conductivity assessments.
GEODB-io
Centralised geotechnical data management solution for storing, accessing, and analysing all your site investigation and material testing data.