Autonomous Gas Fuel Supply Systems with Natural Re-Gasification of Liquefied Hydrocarbon Gas: Principles of Providing Gas Fuel to Customers

Subject of study: Autonomous gas supply systems utilizing liquefied hydrocarbon gas serve as a prospective alternative to centralized gas supply systems based on piped natural gas. At the same time, such systems are very expensive, thus deterring their widespread application for gasification of remote settlements, single households, private farms and seasonal facilities. It is possible to reduce the cost of autonomous systems by implementing systems with natural re-gasification of liquefied natural gas. However, such systems have limited evaporation capacity of gas phase restricting its supply during maximal gas consumption periods.

A possible solution of the problem is using the autonomous gas supply systems placing reservoirs under the ground so that they utilize the warmth of the underground for re-gasification. In addition, the inclusion of the underground evaporator next to the reservoir in the system of the autonomous gas supply guarantees regeneration of the steam phase for various compositions of gas, even in case of a high concentration of butane. The study considers a joint work of the underground reservoir and underground evaporator maintaining a constant gas supply to the building, even during the periods of the peak gas consumption.

We propose developing autonomous gas supply system that supports continuous gas supply for a facility by utilizing natural re-gasification of liquefied natural gas

Materials and methods: we have summarized results of many research papers on natural re-gasification of liquefied natural gas and used mathematical simulations and primary principles of heat exchange theory in order to develop a schematic of such system.

Results: We propose a schematic of autonomous gas supply systems (for individual customers) that utilizes natural evaporation of liquefied hydrocarbon gas and supports continuous gas generation due to joint operation of service tank and ground evaporators.

Conclusions: The proposed structure of autonomous gas supply system that combines steam generation phase in service tank and ground heat exchanger helps to provide continuous gas supply for customers without using additional energy carriers to evaporate liquefied hydrocarbon gas.

We also provide recommendations on practical application of research data obtained during our studies. (paper)