Twister BV has secured a contract from Gasunie for a detailed engineering study using the unique Computational Fluid Dynamic modelling code developed by Twister during the design of their Supersonic Separator. This code is now available to the gas processing industry via the recently launched Twister Flow Solutions engineering consultancy service.
Gasunie, the largest natural gas transmission company in the Netherlands, is interested in reducing the energy and maintenance cost of its city gate stations. In the current city gate stations the gas is heated first in order to avoid the formation of hydrocarbon liquids (condensate) as a consequence of the temperature drop of the gas (typically from 40 to 8 barg). In the new design city gate station, that will be presented at the coming International Gas Research Conference in Vancouver, the equipment is installed underground and the gas is not preheated in a traditional way upstream of the pressure regulator. The liquid (condensate) that may be formed will be removed in a Gasunie cyclone separator© .
The main objectives of this project are to predict the particle size distribution downstream of the pressure regulator and to optimise the geometry of the new design city gate station in order to maximize the separator efficiency of the cyclone separator. These simulations will be carried out using the Twister multiphase flow simulation code. The model calculations will be evaluated using experimental data on hydrocarbon droplet sizes for a real natural gas measured at the laboratory of Gasunie Research.
Twister BV is able to assist Gasunie in developing a highly efficient, cost effective and environmentally friendly new process by using the unique Twister CFD modelling tools, which in turn will improve the Gasunie service to their customers.