Absorption Chillers to Improve the Performance of Small-Scale Biomethane Liquefaction Plants

Alessio Ciambellotti, Gianluca Pasini, Andrea Baccioli, Lorenzo Ferrari and Stefano Barsali
Additional contact information
Alessio Ciambellotti: Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Energia, dei Sistemi, del Territorio e delle Costruzioni (DESTEC)—Università di Pisa, 56122 Pisa, Italy
Gianluca Pasini: Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Energia, dei Sistemi, del Territorio e delle Costruzioni (DESTEC)—Università di Pisa, 56122 Pisa, Italy
Andrea Baccioli: Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Energia, dei Sistemi, del Territorio e delle Costruzioni (DESTEC)—Università di Pisa, 56122 Pisa, Italy
Lorenzo Ferrari: Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Energia, dei Sistemi, del Territorio e delle Costruzioni (DESTEC)—Università di Pisa, 56122 Pisa, Italy
Stefano Barsali: Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Energia, dei Sistemi, del Territorio e delle Costruzioni (DESTEC)—Università di Pisa, 56122 Pisa, Italy

Energies, 2021, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-23

Abstract: Biomethane liquefaction may help decarbonization in heavy transportation and other hard-to-abate sectors. Small-scale liquefaction plants (<10 ton/day) are suitable for small biogas plants located near farms and other agricultural activities. “Internal refrigerant” refrigeration cycles (e.g., Kapitza cycle) are often proposed for small-scale natural gas liquefaction due to their simplicity. An optimized Kapitza-based cycle is modeled and simulated, and then several modifications were studied to evaluate their influence on the energetic and economic performances. Results showed a specific consumption ranging between 0.65 kWh/kg and 0.54 kWh/kg of bio-LNG with no significant improvements by increasing cycle complexity. Instead, a reduction of 17% was achieved with the implementation of absorption chillers, that effectively turn waste heat into useful cooling energy. An economic assessment was finally carried showing that the Levelized Cost of Liquefation is more affected by electricity cost than additional CapEx.

Keywords: liquefaction; biomethane; gas liquefaction; absorption chiller; exergy analysis; economic analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/1/92/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/1/92/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2021:i:1:p:92-:d:709715

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().