Energy Harvesting by a Novel Substitution for Expansion Valves: Special Focus on City Gate Stations of High-Pressure Natural Gas Pipelines

Abstract

A countless amount of energy has been wasted in all kinds of expansion valves (EV) in industries. In fact, EVs, including regulators, throttling valves, capillary tubes, etc., have been used to intentionally reduce the potential of carrier fluid. City gate stations (CGS) have been recognized as one of the important points with high potential for energy harvesting due to its function for regulating natural gas (NG) pressure by EV. In this study, Tesla turbine (TT) is introduced as a new candidate for substitution of EV, particularly those that have been employed in CGS on high-pressure NG pipelines, as well as those applications in which high-potential fluid must be reduced to a low-potential state to form a complete thermodynamic cycle or to be used at end-user equipment. Although harvesting energy is one of the hottest fields of science and engineering, there are few traces of research on using a TT as an alternative for EVs, even for the industries possessing high-pressure lines. This numerical experiment intends to show the capability of TT as a robust candidate for substituting regulation valves through investigating thermohydrodynamic characteristics of the turbulent high-pressure compressible NG flow through a TT under different operation conditions. This study, with the objective of managing the exploitation of resources, can be considered as one step forward toward reinforcing economic and environmental pillars of sustainable development. It is also found that the generated power by TT can support the 285 7W LED simultaneously, or it is equivalent to 84.4 m2 area of the solar panel (150 W, 15.42% efficiency) for the climate condition of Toronto, Canada.

Research on Energy-Efficient Disc Pumps: A Review on Physical Models and Energy Efficiency

“…In recent years, with regard to the development of typical renewable energy low-temperature resources and a large number of waste heat resources generated by industrial processes or prime movers, the organic Rankine cycle power system (ORC) has been in a leading position with its good thermodynamic characteristics and high flexibility. The Tesla turbine, as a new expander for small and micro power applications, has attracted more and more attention in the scientific community because of its low cost and high reliability [19,[55][56][57][58][59]. It is a bladeless turbine composed of one or more nozzles that inject the working fluid tangentially into the rotor.…”

A revised Tesla Turbine concept for 2-phase applications

“…In the last year, a few research papers have been published, reporting the development of an innovative test rig for the characterization of the flow within a 2phase Tesla turbine [16], the possible benefits of utilizing a Tesla turbine instead of an expansion valve within a high-efficiency HVAC system [17], or for the energy harvesting when replacing the expansion valves in high-pressure natural gas pipelines [18,19].…”

Exergy Analysis of a Turbo Expander: Modeling and Simulation

“…[7][8] There are several studies on recovering physical exergy of high pressure natural gas during pressure reduction pro-cess most of them focus on the pressure exergy recovering devices such as turboexpander. [9][10][11] Researchers have developed case studies to estimate the amount of exergy recovery and the economics of turboexpander installations in NG pressure reduction stations. It was found that thermal efficiency of system increase about 8% in the optimum state [12][13][14] some researchers developed a mathematical model to predict the performance of a twin-screw expander as power generation unit.…”