TY - JOUR
TI - Cost based optimization of industrial bulk compresed natural gas filling facility operations
AU - Cetiner Ismail
AU - Coskun Ahmet
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2021
VL - 25
IS - 6
SP - 4721
EP - 4735
PT - Article
AB - In line with the increase in the world population, natural gas, which has an  increasing share in fossil fuels, is nowadays transported throughout  pipelines in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and compressed natural  gas (CNG). Natural gas is preferred to be transported with CNG in terms of  optimum cost. CNG is reduced to a volume of 1/250 at 200 bar pressure in  filling facilities and is transported to multi-element gas containers or gas  tankers where pipelines do not reach. Although the highest cost for these  plants seems to be gas transportation costs, the design, infrastructure and  operational gaps, especially in plant management of the filling facilities  constitute the costs that are not significantly visible. In parallel with  the costs incurred, in this study, a pre-cooling process was actively  applied for cost-based improvement in a bulk CNG filling facility, while  operational optimization was aimed passively. The filling process of the  facility in 2016 was examined according to real data and pre-cooling was  made in 2017 by adding a “chiller” to the filling process to increase the  filling rate to tankers. Thanks to the precooling in 2017, the filling  amount made to tankers increased by %7.23. In 2018, the filling process was  analyzed in detail according to the data of 2017 and the factors affecting  the filling rate were determined. According to these factors, the filling  operation has been optimized on a cost basis. Filling operations in 2018  have been optimized for factors varying from month to month and even day,  such as; temperature conditions, filling method, the structure of gas  tankers and filling platforms, ie the effect of the material used, personnel  effect and the filling rate of machines like chiller, compressor. After  optimization, the amount of filling made in 2018 increased by %4.36 compared  to 2017.