Student Work

Design and Demonstration of a Heat Exchanger for a Compact Natural Gas Compressor

Public

Downloadable Content

open in viewer

As natural gas is compressed, the temperature increases significantly and must be cooled before it can be processed further. Current heat exchangers for this application are large and inefficient. The goal of this project was to design a more efficient and compact heat exchanger to be used in conjunction with OsComp's rotary, positive-displacement natural gas compressor. The design incorporated heat pipes as a means to improve the efficiency of the overall heat transfer. The design has a total footprint of 0.871 m^2, which is 21.5% smaller than an industry standard heat exchanger of the same specification (1.1 m^2). To demonstrate the feasibility of a heat-pipe forced convection cooler; a scaled-down test stand was manufactured and tested.

  • This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.
Creator
Contributors
Publisher
Identifier
  • E-project-042512-123009
Advisor
Year
  • 2012
Sponsor
Date created
  • 2012-04-25
Resource type
Major
Rights statement

Relations

In Collection:

Items

Items

Permanent link to this page: https://digital.wpi.edu/show/x920fz500