Abstract

YI, Eduardo; TRIGILIO, Alessandro  and  DI SCIPIO, Sabrina. Application of co₂ as pure refrigerant in a cascade cycle similar to phillips process® for natural gas liquefaction. Rev. Fac. Ing. UCV [online]. 2014, vol.29, n.1, pp.57-64. ISSN 0798-4065.

To liquefy the Natural Gas the second most employed technology in the world is the Phillips Optimized Cascade®. In this work the simulation of a natural gas liquefaction cascade process with pure refrigerants (propane, ethylene, and methane) was done. The commercial processes simulator PRO/II® was used for comparing the thermodynamics models of Peng-Robinson (PR) and Soave-Redlich-Kwong (SRK). Initially, the base case was simulated and a global coefficient of performance (COP_global) for the cycle equal to 0.52 was obtained. Later, the feasibility of using CO₂ as a refrigerant in the process was studied considering three scenarios: 1) as a substitute for propane, in that case a COP_global of 0.41 was obtained; 2) as pre-cooling of the cascade cycle, reaching a COP_global of 0.49; and 3) as a condenser of the whole cycle with the three cascades. In the last scenario, the COP_global was 0.46, including the CO₂ compressor duty, and was 0.63 when it was not considered.

Keywords : Natural gas; Liquefaction; Carbon dioxide; Cycles; Cascade.

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