Efficient Utilization of Energy of Natural Gas Pressure Drop

The expediency of replacement of throttling devices used for low-pressure gas (fuel, starting, etc.) treatment to meet self-needs of plants treating gas for transportation with expansion units was examined as a part of the PJSC Gazprom’s energy saving policy of improving energy efficiency of subsidiary companies and organization based on application of innovative technologies and energy-generating equipment. The proposed fuel gas treatment technique will able production of additional amount of eco-friendly “green” energy and reduce thereby the operating cost and enhance energy efficiency of the whole plant. The paper presents a comparative analysis of isenthalpic and isentropic gas expansion by various devices. The proposed gas expansion models were constructed using specialized HYSYS (Aspen Tech) software package for modeling chemical engineering system and allow quantitative estimation of the energy of gas pressure drop.