Abstract
Natural gas is a mixture that is widely used in the industries. Knowledge of its thermodynamic properties is essential for evaluating the process and equipment performance. This paper quantifies the energy that can be extracted from natural gas using a turbo expander. Natural gases of wide-ranging compositions collected from 6 different gas fields in Egypt were investigated based on energy and exergy analysis. The study was conducted using MATLAB. Numerous simulation runs were made by taking various typical feed compositions classified as lean and rich. The effects of increasing the amount of C1, C5 in the feed stream on the efficiency of energy utilization are presented. A validation analysis was performed. The results show similar trends and good agreements. It was concluded from the results that when the concentration of methane in the gas mixture increase, the exergetic efficiency decreases. The results also show that the values of thermodynamic properties depend on the relative amount of heavy components in the feed stream.
Highlights
Natural gas (NG) has become the primary source of energy in many countries
In order to transport this high pressure gas to a distribution system where it is being consumed, its pressure should be reduced to a safe and usable level usually within 1.5โ2 MPa. This is usually done in natural gas pressure reduction stations
There are several studies on recovering physical exergy of high pressure natural gas during pressure reduction process most of them focus on the pressure exergy recovering devices such as turboexpander.[9,10,11]
Summary
Natural gas (NG) has become the primary source of energy in many countries. When it is extracted from refinery it has a high pressure of about 7 MPa where it is consumed at the domestic and industrial sectors. It was found that thermal efficiency of system increase about 8% in the optimum state[12,13,14] some researchers developed a mathematical model to predict the performance of a twin-screw expander as power generation unit.[15,16] Kuczynski et al presented formula that allows a quick and easy evaluation of the applicability of an expander on the selected gas regulation station.[17] Olfati et al.[18] presented the energy and exergy analyses of a pressure reduction station. The exergy analysis of a turbo-expander unit and the impact of various feed compositions has been investigated and validated according to the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and the performance of the TX is evaluated according to a different composition
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