Scribd
Upload
37 views

Propane Project

The document is a chemical engineering report that studies the energy requirements and costs of a plasma-assisted propane combustion system. It constructs an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the mass and energy flows across the entire process. It then estimates the running costs of the system based on the calculated power usage of 7570.08 kW per year. The annual cost to run the plasma-assisted propane combustion process was estimated to be R80.17 million per year, assuming the plant operates 24 hours a day.

Uploaded by

VILLA KGAMADI
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
37 views

Propane Project

The document is a chemical engineering report that studies the energy requirements and costs of a plasma-assisted propane combustion system. It constructs an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the mass and energy flows across the entire process. It then estimates the running costs of the system based on the calculated power usage of 7570.08 kW per year. The annual cost to run the plasma-assisted propane combustion process was estimated to be R80.17 million per year, assuming the plant operates 24 hours a day.

Uploaded by

VILLA KGAMADI
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 9

Plasma-assisted propane

combustion energy requirements


and costs

Chemical Engineering
report by:

32280424 KGAMADI, SM MR
33090912 MUJURA, NP MR
31618529 NHLAPO, M MR
37196073 TSIMANE, LTC MR

Module: CEMI224
1 Introduction
1.1 Background
Many large scale processes use energy supplied from combustion of fuel. But, these
combustion reactions need to run at optimum conditions in order to supply enough
energy, minimising loss. Plasma-assisted hydrocarbon combustion systems are able
to reach these optimal conditions. These conditions do not only serve to provide
sufficient energy but also lower the impact of oxygenated compounds (such as SOx,
and NOx) on the environment. Thus, if plasma-assisted hydrocarbon combustion
system was to be implemented in a process the energy cost requirement would be
one of the factors to be considered.

1.2 Problem statement


Running a plasma-assisted propane combustion system comes with a cost, the
energy to run such a system has to be known. From this energy it is where the cost
of running this system in a process plant can be estimated.

1.3 Aim
Study the project problem and calculate the energy required for a plasma-assisted
propane combustion systems and then estimate the cost of this energy.

1.4 Objective(s)
• Construct an Excel spreadsheet that clearly shows the calculations of the
mass and energy across the entire process
• Estimate running costs for this section of the plant based on the power usage
and/or heat requirements within the process

2 Literature Review
Plasma assisted combustion (PAC) is the technique of improving combustion
processes by using a plasma, often in the form of non-thermal/non-equilibrium
plasmas. (Rosocha, et al., 2004)

PAC is a complex and multifaceted study that encompasses a variety of engineering


and sciences, including combustion, chemistry, plasma engineering, fluids. It also
has a plethora of uses in industries such as aerospace engineering, electricity
production, propulsion etc.
Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD), gliding arc discharge (GAD), and nanosecond
pulse discharges are the most common forms of non-thermal plasma used in PAC.
There are numerous methods for implementing non-thermal plasmas for PAC,
depending on the goal and system involved.

In non-thermal plasmas (NTPs), the electrons are ‘‘hot,’’ while the ions and neutral
species are ‘‘cold’’—which results in little waste enthalpy being deposited in a
process gas stream. This is in direct contrast to thermal plasmas, where the
electron, ion, and neutral-species energies are in thermal equilibrium or ‘‘hot’’ and
considerable waste heat is deposited in the process gas.

Based on the demonstrated generation of free radicals and other active species in
non-thermal plasmas used for air pollution control 6,7 and the decomposition of
methane and carbon dioxide,8–10 it should be possible to extrapolate this non-
thermal plasma process to break up large organic fuel molecules into smaller
molecules that are more easily and completely combusted and to create highly
reactive free-radical chemical species that can promote more efficient combustion by
their strong oxidizing power or by their ability to promote combustion-sustaining
chain reactions.

The ability to generate energetic electrons that can channel energy into favourable
chemistry while delivering minimal enthalpy to the process gas makes an NTP
enticing.

Non-thermal plasma "activation" is a novel idea for continuously converting liquid or


gaseous fuels into reactive species, so that combustion does not rely on self-
generation of reactive species. The combustion of such fuels should result in much
faster reaction rates. This concept entails pre-cracking the fuel into the required
reactive species using an atmospheric-pressure plasma and may also include
catalytic technology. If the fuel is a liquid, it can be atomized in the same way that
conventional fuel injectors do.

If the fuel is in the form of a gas, such as propane, natural gas, methane, or butane,
it is simply delivered via a flowmeter. The atomized fuel or fuel gas is passed
through a plasma chamber and "activated" into reactive species. This "activation"
process could theoretically be tuned to increase the level and type of molecular
breakdown desired.
3 Methods
3.1.1 Calculations procedure
Process setup:

Below is the flow diagram of the process and preceding is the


explanation of the diagram:

Figure 1: Schematic flow diagram of the process

The diagram above in summary it shows propane liquid fed into the
preheater, where it changes phase to gas phase. Then it goes into the
heat exchanger, whereby the heated water from boiler provides heat to
the heat exchanger. This heat is then transferred to the propane gas to
raise its temperature. Then the propane gas then goes into the reactor
where it combusts with oxygen from the air, which is fed to the reactor.
The products of the combustion and unreacted air goes into leaves the
reactor, to deliver energy.

Assumptions:
To simplify the complexity of calculations the following assumptions
were made:
• The process is at steady state, at steady this means the
variables of the process will not change with time. This reduces
the complexity of the problem, because if they were to change
this will mean that integration will need to be used.
• The reactor is adiabatic, the reason being that the outlet
temperature of the products from the reactor is unknown. Thus
leading to a conclusion of think that the temperature needed to
be calculated.
• The propane gas that passes through reactor and the heat
exchanger behaves like an ideal gas. The reason behind this
is that according to Felder et. Al (2017), calculating the heat of
capacity associated with the change in pressure for gas
molecules, thermodynamic correlations from the book The
properties of Gases and Liquids by Poling et al. (2001) has to be
used.
Going through the book the material is too complex to
comprehend for this level of study. Hence, by assuming propane
gas behaves ideally, it means its dependence on enthalpy
associated with pressure change can be neglected.
• The propane gas when it goes through the reactor and the
heat exchanger, its pressure is isobaric. This is because in
the project nothing was mentioned, if whether the pressure
changes after passing through the reactor and the heat
exchanger.

Calculations walk through:


Enthalpy and specific enthalpy
To calculate the change in specific enthalpies and enthalpies of the
components of the process the reference states that were used
where: Propane( Liquid, 21ºC, 858.5 kPa) and Water (Liquid, 0.01
ºC, 0.00611 bar).

This is because for propane according to Christopher B (2013)


under the reference conditions provided above, propane exists as
liquid. As for reference conditions of water, they were provided by
Felder et al. (2017).

For every component (preheater, heat exchanger, reactor and


boiler) to find the specific enthalpies for the outlet and inlet streams,
the propane and both water were taken from the reference
conditions to their state conditions. Followed by the calculation of
enthalpies, by multiplying the specific enthalpies by the molar flow
rates that was at each corresponding component of the process.

Summing all enthalpies of each component of the process, total


heat of the process was obtained. It was from this total heat the
cost of running this process was obtained, using this enthalpy
together with electricity cost of R1.209/kWh for business, obtained
from Global Petrol Prices (2022).

Air moles feed rate at the reactor

To calculate the air mole feed rate at the reactor, that was used for
combustion method provided by chapter 4 of Felder et al. (2017).

4 Results and Discussion


4.1 Enthalpy
At the preheater since the inlet was used as the reference the outlet change in
enthalpy or preferred to as heat, was found to be Q̇ = 23.41 kW. From this followed
the heat of the heat exchanger that was found to be Q̇ = -84.23 kW and tt the boiler
the heat was Q̇=185.38 kW. As for the reactor the calculations took a different,
instead of having Q̇ as some value, instead it becomes zero since the reactor is
adiabatic. Thus, the value that was to be determined was outlet enthalpy which was
Ḣ=7445.532 kW. Thus adding all these enthalpies, they amounted to 7570.08 kW.
4.2 Cost calculations
Using basic algebra and physics, the cost of running the processes came to R80.17
million/year. This was based on the assumption that the plant/process runs 24 hours
everyday.
Conclusions
Running this process would be expensive costly, cutting the cost would require to not
let the plant run on weekends depending on its purpose.
5 References
Christopher, S. (2013). Why is propane stored in household tanks but natural gas is
not?. https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/05/02/why-is-propane-stored-in-
household-tanks-but-natural-gas-is-
not/#:~:text=But%20household%20propane%20is%20not,with%20a%20strong%20
metal%20tank Date of access: 10 Oct. 2022

Felder, R.M., Rousseau, R.W. and Bullard, L.G. (2017). Felder’s elementary
principles of chemical processes. Hoboken, Nj Wiley.

Poling, B.E., Reid, R.C., Prausnitz, J.M. and O’Connell, J.P. (2001). The Properties
of Gases and Liquids 5E. McGraw Hill Professional.

Rosocha, L.A., Coates, D.M., Platts, D. and Stange, S., 2004. Plasma-enhanced
combustion of propane using a silent discharge. Physics of plasmas, 11(5), pp.2950-
2956.

Veldhuizen, V. (2000). Electrical discharges for environmental purposes :


fundamentals and applications. Huntington, N.Y.: Nova Science Publishers.

You might also like