SIMULATION OF ABSORPTION CYCLES FOR INTEGRATION INTO REFINING PROCESSES

Abstract

The oil and gas industry is an immense energy consumer. Absorption chillers can be used to recover liquid natural gas (LNG) plant waste heat to provide cooling, which is especially valuable in the oil and gas industry and would also improve energy efficiency. This thesis details the modeling procedure for single and double effect water/lithium bromide and single effect ammonia/water chillers. Comparison of these models to published modeling results and experimental data shows acceptable agreement, within 5% for the water/lithium bromide models and within 7% for the ammonia/water model. Additionally, each model was integrated with a gas turbine as a waste heat source and parametric studies were conducted for a range of part load conditions, evaporator temperatures, and ambient conditions. Finally, the best chiller design was selected among the three evaluated here, and an annual performance study was conducted to quantify the expected cooling performance and related energy savings.