Numerical simulation of pressure pulsation effects of a snubber in a CNG station for increasing measurement accuracy

Abstract

Natural companies employ turbine flow meters to measure natural gas which delivered to Compressed Natural Gas stations. The stations utilize compressors to increase pressure. The compressor produces a flow pulsation, which affects the accuracy of the measurement. The main aim of this article is to decrease the compressor effects on measurement accuracy by utilizing a snubber between the turbine flow meter and the reciprocating compressors. For this aim, numerical modeling has been built to simulate natural gas flow through a snubber. The effects of various snubber parameters on pressure pulsation have been investigated. The parameters included snubber volume to the minimum volume ratio, the ratio of height to diameter, outlet pipe length, and the existence and non-existence a buffer. The Ansys Fluent has been used for numerical modeling with transient analysis. Results show that in H/D value of 3, the maximum reduction in the percentage of pressure pulsation drop is about 47% and increasing the outlet pipe length to the 10 times of initial length causes a decrease of about 83% in pressure pulsations. Besides, for the ratio of snubber volume to the minimum volume from 1 to 16.7, the amplitude of pressure pulsations decreases from 4.1% to 0.25%.