• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
• /
• v.23 no.2
• /
• pp.74-81
• /
• 2019

Expansion turbine system to recover the electricity energy from natural gas transmission stations is a well-known technique. The turbo-expander efficiency depends on the ratio of the natural gas flow rates to the design flow rate of the turbo-expander. However, if there is a big difference of the natural gas flow rate through the pressure letdown station because of seasonal supply pattern, that is, high flow rate in winter while low flow rate in summer, single turbo-expander system is not so efficient as to recover the pressurized energy from the low flow-rate natural gas. Therefore, we have proposed a new concept of double turbo-expander system: one is a big capacity and the other a small capacity. Here we have theoretically computed the electric powers at the pressure reduction from 18.5 bar to 7.5 bar depending on the inlet conditions of temperature and flow rate. The calculated electricity generation has been increased by 30% from 12.4 MW in a single turbo expander to 16.1 MW in the proposed double turbo-expander system when a minimal design efficiency of 0.72 is applied.