A Numerical Study on Using Air Cooler Heat Exchanger for Low Grade Energy Recovery from Exhaust Flue Gas in Natural Gas Pressure Reduction Stations

Heat EXchangers (HEX) that are used in City Gate Station (CGS) systems are modeled numerically to recover the exhaust waste heat. It was tried to find the best viscous model to obtain results in accordance with experimental results and to change the heat exchanger design. This HEX is used for recovering heat from exhaust flue gas with a mixture of 40% water and 60% ethylene glycol as the cooling fluid. Then, the effects of sizes and numbers of fins and tube rows on recovered heat rate were investigated under various pump speeds. As the first step in solving the problem, SST k–ω and RNG k–e suitable viscous models were chosen for these kinds of problems. Secondly, a new HEX is designed at a fixed coolant speed, pipe and fin thickness, and shell dimension because of operational constraints. Finally, the best HEX with the minimum pressure drop (minimum fin number) is numerically analyzed, and the new HEX specifications were extracted.