Experimental and numerical analysis of the influence of thermal control on adsorption and desorption processes in adsorbed natural gas storage

Abstract

Natural gas,the most environmentally friendly fossil fuel, can be stored in a vessel based on adsorption technology, designed for energy efficient storage of natural gas at relatively medium pressures (3−4 MPa).The application of adsorption technology will reduce the energy consumption for gas compressing or gas liquefying compared to compressed and liquefied natural gas storage methods,also, it will lead to cost savings in compressing and cooling equipment. While charging/discharging of adsorbed natural gas (ANG) vessel, the latent heat of adsorption counteracts to adsorption/desorption process, as the result, thermal effect causes a reduction of vessel capacity. Therefore,the influence of thermal control on adsorption and desorption processes in adsorbed natural gas vessel was studied experimentally and numerically in this paper. The study focusing on the three dimensional heat exchange is important in order to understand the heat transfer phenomena and analyze influence of thermal control comprehensively. The temperature and adsorption uptake profiles in the vessel were demonstrated in the numerical simulation. Comparison of experimental and simulation results showed that deviation between experimental and numerical results was 0.1%.