On a pipeline pressure drop model for nonideal, compressible, gas mixture flow with application to pipeline flow of natural gas-hydrogen blends

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new dimensionless model to accurately predict pressure drops in pipelines transporting nonideal, compressible gas mixtures, including natural gas-hydrogen blends, using algebraic equations for steady, isothermal flow.

Contribution

It develops a novel dimensionless algebraic model for pressure drop prediction in nonideal, compressible gas mixtures, applicable to natural gas-hydrogen pipeline flows.

Findings

Pressure drop depends on hydrogen mole fraction.

Model accurately predicts pressure drops for real natural gas compositions.

Applicable to both ideal and nonideal gas mixture models.

Abstract

This work presents a novel, dimensionless model that results in a dimensionless algebraic equation that can be used to quantify the pressure drop associated with the steady state, isothermal flow through a straight, horizontal pipeline, of a compressible gas mixture whose thermodynamic behavior is described for comparison purposes by ideal gas (IG) and nonideal gas generic cubic (GC) equation of state (EOS) models. A solution strategy, that uses the aforementioned dimensionless algebraic equation, is then presented that quantifies the pipeline pressure drop for hydrogen containing mixtures. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the pressure drop dependence on the hydrogen mole fraction of a binary, methane hydrogen mixture, and a natural gas hydrogen mixture with a real life natural gas composition containing eight species.