Title: Thermodynamic analysis of novel absorption type pressure reducing station

Authors: Rahul S. Patil; Sunil S. Bhagwat

Addresses: Department of Chemical Engineering, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, India ' Department of Chemical Engineering, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, India

Abstract: Steam is an important utility in the process industry such as oil refinery, paper mill, etc. In industries, boiler generates utility steam at high pressure and distribute it through different pressure headers as per the pressure requirements of the process. The distribution of steam from high pressure header to low pressure header is done by pressure reducing station. It was found that in the depressurisation process a significant amount of exergy destruction happens up to 42%. The present work proposes the novel absorption type pressure reducing station which addresses the exergy destruction issue. In this work, the mathematical model and simulation of absorption type pressure reducing station (APRS) and absorption-ejector type pressure reducing station (AEPRS) station has been done in Scilab (open source software) using highly accurate thermodynamic correlations available in the literature. Sensitivity analysis has been done for various operating parameters. The performance of both APRS and AEPRS is compared with conventional PRS and steam ejector system and it was found that APRS and AEPRS have low exergy destruction up to 9.5%.

Keywords: absorption; pressure reducing station; LiBr-water; exergy destruction.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEX.2022.120897

International Journal of Exergy, 2022 Vol.37 No.3, pp.358 - 375

Received: 06 Mar 2021
Accepted: 15 Jun 2021
Published online: 16 Feb 2022 *

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