• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.28-34
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• 2014

In the natural gas pressure regulation station, high pressure natural gas is decompressing using pressure regulation valves. Waste pressure occurred in the pressure regulation process can be recovered through adopting turbo expanders. However, in the waste pressure recovery process, Joule Thompson effect causes below $0^{\circ}C$ and this low temperature freezes outside land of pipeline or generates methane hydrate in the pipeline which can block the pipeline. Therefore, turbo expander systems are accompanying with a boiler for preheating natural gas. Molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC), one of the high temperature fuel cell, can use natural gas as a direct fuel and is also exhausting low emission gas and generating electricity. In this paper, a thermodynamic analysis on the hybrid MCFC-turbo expander system is conducted. The fuel cell system is analyzed for the base load of the hybrid system.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.6-19
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• 2014

Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) has been widely used to convert renewable energy such as solar energy, geothermal energy, or waste energy etc., to electric power. For a small scale output power less than 10 kW, turbo-expander is not widely used than positive displacement expander. However, the turbo-expander has merits that it can operate well at off-design points. Usually, the available thermal energy for a small scale ORC is not supplied continuously. So, the mass flowrate should be adjusted in the expander to maintain the cycle. In this study, nozzles was adopted as stator to control the mass flowrate, and radial-type turbine was used as expander. The turbine operated at partial admission. R245fa was adopted as working fluid, and supersonic nozzle was designed to get the supersonic flow at the nozzle exit. When the inlet operating condition of the working fluid was varied corresponding to the fluctuation of the available thermal energy, optimal operating condition was investigated at off-design due to the variation of mass flowrate.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.1473-1478
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• 2011

In this study, simulation and optimization works for a demethanizer column have been performed to obtain ethane and heavier products from a pretreated natural gas stream. Pretreated natural gas feed stream is partially condensed after being precooled by exchanging heat with demethanizer top vapor stream and by using an external refrigeration cycle with a propane refrigerant. Vapor stream is furtherly cooled and partially condensed through a turbo-expander and the power generated from the expansion of turbo-expander was delivered to the compressor for the residue gas compression. Liquid stream is being cooled by Joule-Thomson expansion valve and is fed to the middle section of the demethanizer. Ethane recovery percent for feed natural gas was set to 75% and methane to ethane molar ratio was fixed as 0.015. Propane refrigeration heat duty was reduced by splitting the feed stream and to exchange heat with side reboiler.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.1-7
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• 2012

Natural gas through pipeline is supplied to consumers after its pressure gets down compulsorily. The waste pressure energy of this process can be restored by use of turbo expander which can produce electricity. So, turbo expander conducts two functions - pressure reduction and power generation. The power amount is the enthalpy difference between the inlet and outlet states. The five main factors which affect economic profit are facility price, produced power amount, pre-heating amount, electricity cost, and fuel gas cost. Power generation depends mainly on flow amount because inlet and outlet states are fixed. A methodology to estimate economy in irregular flow pattern is proposed and using this way, a case study was carried out.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.1032-1037
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• 2011

In this study, simulation and optimization works for a demethanizer column have been performed to obtain ethane and heavier products from a pretreated natural gas stream. Pretreated natural gas feed stream was partially condensed after being precooled by exchanging heat with demethanizer top vapor stream and by using an external refrigeration cycle with a propane refrigerant. Vapor stream was cooled further and partially condensed through a turbo-expander. The power generated from the expansion of turbo-expander was delivered to the compressor for the residue gas compression. Liquid stream was cooled by Joule-Thomson expansion valve and was fed to the middle section of the demethanizer. Recovery percent of ethane for feed natural was set to 80% and methane to ethane molar ratio was fixed as 0.0119. On the other hand, some of the cold heat could be recovered by splitting the feed stream and by exchanging heat with side reboiler in order to reduce the heat duty in the propane refrigeration cycle.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.136-142
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• 2012

Thermodynamic equations for the electric power and temperature in a turbo expander generator (TEG) using pressure energy in a natural gas line are derived. From the equations, it was shown that dominant factor is not the pressure difference but the pressure ratio. The high energy level in the inlet of TEG can be made from nearly no expense of electric energy input, which means TEG can be treated as one of newly available clean energy source. If a post heating method is chosen to heat up expanded natural gas, the usage of cold energy is possible without a refrigeration cycle. The combined TEG and refrigeration system enhances economic benefit much more.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.13-20
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• 2014

In natural gas distribution system, gas pressure is regulated correspond to requirement using throttle valve which is releasing huge pressure energy as useless form. The waste pressure can be recovered by using turbo machinery devices such as a turbo expander. In this process, excessive temperature drop occurs due to Joule-Thompson effect during the expansion process. Installing natural gas boiler before or after the turbo expander prevents temperature drop. Fuel cell or gas engine hybrid system further improve the efficiency, but 1~2% of total transporting natural gas is used for operating the hybrid system. In this study, a heat pump system is proposed as a preheating device which can be operated without using transporting natural gas. Thermodynamic analysis on evaporating and condensing temperatures and refrigerants is conducted. Results show that R717 is proper refrigerant for the hybrid system with high COP and low turbine work within the defined operating conditions. In domestic usage in Korea, the heat pump system has more economic feasibility owing to natural gas being imported with a high price of LNG form.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.5-12
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• 2014

Organic Rankine Cycle is widely used to convert the low-grade thermal energy to the electrical energy. However, usually available thermal energy is not supplied constantly. This makes hard to use positive displacement expanders. Hence, turbo-expander has merits to apply as an expander in ORC because it can operate well off-design points even though the mass flowrate is fluctuated. The thermal energy fluctuation causes the turbo-expander to operate in partial admission. In addition, supersonic nozzles are required so that the partially admitted turbine operates efficiently. In this study, R245fa was chosen as a working fluid of ORC. A design method and an analysis technique of supersonic nozzle based on R245fa were developed. The shape of the nozzle was designed by the characteristic method. The thermal properties within the nozzle were estimated and the predicted results were agreed well with the computed results.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.41-48
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• 2020

The present study discussed the thermodynamic analysis of the hydrogen liquefaction process to build a hydrogen liquefaction pilot plant with a small capacity (0.5 ton/day). A 2-stage Brayton cycle utilizing LNG/LN2 cold energy was suggested to be built in Korea for the hydrogen liquefaction pilot plant with a small capacity. Thermodynamic analysis on the effect of various variables on the efficiency of hydrogen liquefaction process was performed. As a result, the CASE in which the ortho-para conversion catalyst was infiltrated inside the heat exchanger showed the best process efficiency. Finally, thermodynamic analysis was performed on the effect of turbo expander compression ratio on the hydrogen liquefaction process and it was confirmed that an optimal turbo expander compression ratio exists.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.40-44
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• 2020

This paper describes the real operation of 2 kW class reverse-Brayton refrigeration system with neon as a working fluid. The refrigeration cycle is designed with operating pressure of 0.5 and 1.0 MPa at low and high pressure side, respectively. Compressor package consists of several helium scroll compressors witch are originally used for driving GM cryocooler. Three segments of plate heat exchanger are adopted to cover the wide temperature range and the refrigeration power is produced by turbo expander. The developed refrigeration system is successfully operated at its target temperature of 77 K. In experiments, all parameters such as pressure, temperature, mass flow rate and valve opening are measured to investigate characteristics during cool-down process and normal state. The difference between design and real operation is discussed with measured experimental data. At normal state of 77 K operation, the developed reverse-Brayton refrigeration system shows 1.83 kW at 68.2 K of cold-end temperature.