Combustion and reaction

Natural Gas Pressure Reduction Station Self-powered by Fire Thermoelectric Generator

  • WANG Yupeng ,
  • TONG Xiao ,
  • WANG Hongmei ,
  • QIU Junfeng ,
  • SHEN Limei
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  • 1. School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
    2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China
    3. Hangzhou Steam Turbine Company Limited, Hangzhou 310022, China
    4. Shenzhen Huazhong University of Science and Technology Research Institute, Shenzhen 518057, China

Online published: 2023-12-01

Supported by

This work was jointly supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (52176007), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2016YXMS048) and Basic Research Program of Shenzhen Science and Technology (JCYJ20210324115611030).

Copyright

Science Press, Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, CAS and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022

Abstract

Pressure reduction station (PRS) is an essential facility in natural gas transmission, which owns the function of pressure reduction, demand-supply management and flow metering. However, a large number of PRSs are located in off-grid areas and powered by battery equipment resulting in high maintenance costs. So, how to realize the energy independence of these PRSs is an urgent issue to be solved. Therefore, the natural gas fired thermoelectric generation (FTEG) module, including gas flue, cover, TEGs and heat radiators, is designed for PRS in off-grid areas. Phase change material is introduced into the FTEG module to change the operation mode from continuous mode into a periodic mode, and the prototype of the FTEG module is built to discuss the generation performance in different modes. The results show that the generation efficiency of the FTEG module is improved by 63% in periodic mode compared with the continuous mode. Then, the numerical model is established to investigate the impacts of air coefficient, cold-side heat radiator and number of TEGs on the module performance. It found that the impacts of cold-side heat radiator and the number of TEGs are more significant than those of the air coefficient. After adjusting these key parameters, an optimized FTEG module with 32 TEGs is proposed, which has an average power generation of 16.4 W and a heat collection efficiency of 84.6%. Eventually, 3 to 6 modules can be connected in series to meet the power requirement of 50 W to 100 W for PRS. This high-performance FTEG module can accelerate the process of achieving the energy independence of PRS and promote its application in mesoscale equipment.

Cite this article

WANG Yupeng , TONG Xiao , WANG Hongmei , QIU Junfeng , SHEN Limei . Natural Gas Pressure Reduction Station Self-powered by Fire Thermoelectric Generator[J]. Journal of Thermal Science, 2022 , 31(3) : 840 -853 . DOI: 10.1007/s11630-022-1592-y

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