Supersonic liquefaction properties of natural gas in the Laval nozzle

Jiang Bian, Xuewen Cao, Wen Yang, Mawugbe Ayivi Edem, Pengbo Yin and Wenming Jiang

Energy, 2018, vol. 159, issue C, 706-715

Abstract: In view of the excellent performance of the supersonic separator for natural gas dehydration, a new type of natural gas liquefaction process using the Laval nozzle is proposed in this paper. Theoretical and numerical studies of the supersonic flow and liquefaction process of the methane-ethane binary system in this nozzle are carried out. The effects of the inlet temperature, inlet pressure, back pressure and component composition on the liquefaction process are analyzed. The results show that the critical liquefaction temperature and pressure of the methane-ethane binary system decrease under low inlet temperature or high inlet pressure conditions and the range of the liquid phase region increases, which promotes the liquefaction process. With the increase of the back pressure of the nozzle, the position of the shock wave moves forward and the liquefaction environment is more completely destroyed. For a multi-component natural gas, in which the heavy hydrocarbon content is high, natural gas is more easily liquefied using the Laval nozzle. The liquefaction efficiency range of the newly designed liquefaction process with the Laval nozzle are 0.0795–0.1321 (HYSYS results) and 0.0718–0.1505 (MATLAB results) when the inlet pressure of the process is 2–5 MPa. The nozzle more easily achieves liquefaction compared with a throttle under the same conditions.

Keywords: Natural gas; Liquefaction; Laval nozzle; Supersonic; Phase envelope (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544218312611
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:159:y:2018:i:c:p:706-715

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2018.06.196

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().