Cooling large volumes of gas
Cooling large volumes of gas
(OP)
Here is my situation. We are testing compressors in our shop that are destine for field use. To test we run the compressor through a closed loop with nitrogen as the compressing gas. As you can imagine the gas in loop heats up very quickly and we run into High temperatures on our compressor cylinders. The gas is cooled from discharge temp (250-300 degF) to 120-130 degF but that still creates high temps in our cylinders. We would like to run our tests for longer, but can't avoid the overheating problem.
My question is: where could I find a refrigerator type cooler that would handle high pressures (1500psig) and cool large volumes (10-20 MMSCF/D) of flowing nitrogen from about 130 degF to less than 80 degF? Who would supply these type of coolers? Any suggestions?
My question is: where could I find a refrigerator type cooler that would handle high pressures (1500psig) and cool large volumes (10-20 MMSCF/D) of flowing nitrogen from about 130 degF to less than 80 degF? Who would supply these type of coolers? Any suggestions?





RE: Cooling large volumes of gas
A chiller for that type of volume and pressure will probably be a good chunk of change.
Could you go open-loop or partially open and inject some liquid N2 into the stream? Capital cost would be way less.
If your testing is not continuous throught the day, you might want to look into thermal storage systems rather than a chiller with the capacity to keep up.
RE: Cooling large volumes of gas
How is the gas currently cooled from 300 to 120?
I2I
RE: Cooling large volumes of gas
BigInch
-born in the trenches.
http://virtualpipeline.spaces.msn.com
RE: Cooling large volumes of gas
Best regards
Morten
RE: Cooling large volumes of gas
I like the idea of liquid N2 or a turbo expander, where could I shop for a turbo expander? We have thought about increasing the volume of the test loop but I am concerned that the volume needed to reduce the heat substantially would be too large to be feasable.
RE: Cooling large volumes of gas
is there a nearby cooling tower that you can tap into? need to negotiate usage cost with owner.
investigate evaporative type cooler (not too good in high humidity locations).
like MintJulep states, a refrigerant type will be cost prohibitive. so forget it.
meanwhile, good luck!
-pmover
RE: Cooling large volumes of gas
This can decrease the temperaure and thus extent of the cooling required for the compressed outlet gas from the cylinder.
RE: Cooling large volumes of gas
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: Cooling large volumes of gas
http://w
and of-course:
http://www.mafi-trench.com/
Best regards
Morten
RE: Cooling large volumes of gas
RE: Cooling large volumes of gas
I am considering a valve system that slowly introduces fresh cool N2 into the suction side and slowly releases the hot high pressure air off the discharge side when the compressor gets a larger enough diferential built up. So for example when my compressor got the suction down to about 50psig and the discharge up to about 350psig. slowly start letting fresh N2 into the suction and releasing hot N2 off the discharge. So eventually I could just be compressing all fresh N2 and releasing it to atmosphere, instead of recirculating it. Any thoughts from anyone on this idea?????