Cooling throttle

If high wellhead pressures are available over long periods, cooling can be achieved by expanding gas through a valve, a process known as Joule Thomson (JT) throttling. The valve is normally used in combination with a liquid gas separator and a heat exchanger, and inhibition measures must be taken to avoid hydrate formation. The whole process is often termed low temperature separation (LTS). 

In order to avoid the need to measure velocity head, the loop piping must be sized to have a velocity pressure less than 5% of the static pressure. Flow conditions at the required overload capacity should be checked for critical pressure drop to ensure that valves are adequately sized. For ease of control, the loop gas cooler is usually placed downstream of the discharge throttle valve. Care should be taken to check that choke flow will not occur in the cooler tubes. Another cause of concern is cooler heat capacity and/or cooling water approach temperature. A check of these items, especially with regard to expected ambient condi-... 

The nomenclature introduced by Hawthorne and Davis [4] is adopted and gas turbine cycles are referred to as follows CHT, CBT, CHTX, CBTX, where C denotes compressor H, air heater B, burner (combustion) T, turbine X, heat exchanger. R and I indicate reversible and irreversible. The subscripts U and C refer to uncooled and cooled turbines in a cycle, and subscripts 1,2, M indicate the number of cooling steps (one, two or multi-step cooling). Thus, for example, [CHT] C2 indicates an irreversible cooled simple cycle with two steps of turbine cooling. The subscript T is also used to indicate that the cooling air has been throttled from the compressor delivery pres.sure. 

Fig. 4.3. Temperature-entropy diagram for two step cooling, (a) Cooling air taken at appropriate pre.ssures and (b) LP cooling air throttled from compressor exit.

However, it is important to note that this conclusion becomes invalid if the air for cooling the LP turbine is taken from compressor delivery (as in Fig. 4.3b) and then throttled at constant temperature (T2 = Ty) to the lower pressure before being mixed with the gas leaving the HP turbine. The thermal efficiency drops as another internal irreversibility is introduced it can be shown [5] that... 

For the numerical example the cooled efficiency becomes 0.4205, a reduction of 0.0237 from (tj)ru = 0.4442. The extra loss in efficiency for throttling the cooling air from compressor discharge to the appropriate pressure at the LP turbine entry is thus 0.0052 for the numerical example, which is again quite small. 

For the various reversible cycles described in Section 4.2.1, the thermal efficiency was the same, independent of the number of cooling. steps. This is not the case for the irreversible cycles described in this section. Both the thermal efficiency and the turbine exit temperature depend on the number and nature of cooling steps (whether the cooling air is throttled or not). 

Figure 6-32 illustrates ejector systems with large condensable loads which can be at least partially handled in the precondenser. Controls are used to maintain constant suction pressure at varying loads (air bleed), or to reduce the required cooling water at low process loads or low water temperatures [2]. The cooler W ater must not be throttled below the minimum (usually 30%-50% of maximum) for proper contact in the condenser. It may be controlled by tailwater temperature, or by the absolute pressure. 

The condensed ammonia passes through a throttle and an evaporator in exactly the same way as in a standard vapour compression cycle and the useful cooling is obtained at the evaporator. 

Figure 2.22 [2.6] demonstrates the method of a cooling circuit with recirculated flow An injector pump operated with just evaporated LN2 aspirates the warmer N2 coming from the condenser and feeds the mixture back in the condenser. The desired condenser temperature can be controlled by a throttle valve. To achieve a uniform temperature distribution, the gas mixture is alternately fed to one or the other end of the condenser. No results of such a system are given. 

Apparatus. The generator employed is shown in fig. 10. There are six important points. (1) The column. <4 is designed so that throttling is avoided it is at least 2 ft. long and surmounted by a reflux doublesurface water-condenser B. (2) A Perkin triangle (air-cooled), inserted between the down-condenser and the traps, enables any phosphorus oxychloride which distils to be removed. (3) It is convenient to have three traps, viz. C, ice and salt D, acetone and carbon dioxide E, liquid air. (4) The intermittent addition of the solid antimony trifluoride presents a problem. The mechanical solid feed... 

A proposal is made to use a geothermal supply of hot water at 1500 kPa and 180°C to operate a steam turbine. The high-pressure water is throttled into a flash evaporator chamber, which forms liquid and vapor at a lower pressure of 400 kPa. The liquid is discarded while the saturated vapor feeds the turbine and exits at lOkPa. Cooling water is available at 15°C. Find the turbine power per unit geothermal hot-water mass flow rate. The turbine efficiency is 88%. Find the power produced by the geothermal power plant, and find the optimized flash pressure that will give the most turbine power per unit geothermal hot water mass flow rate. 

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