METHOD OF UTILIZATION OF POTENTIAL ENERGY OF GAS AT REDUCING AT GAS DISTRIBUTING STATIONS AND DEVICE FOR REALIZATION OF THIS METHOD Russian patent published in 2003 - IPC

FIELD: power mechanical engineering; compressed natural gas transportation systems; generation of electric power and compressed gases. SUBSTANCE: proposed method includes dividing compressed gas taken from main pipe line into three flows; potential energy of first flow is generated in stepwise manner in one, two or more energy separating chambers located in succession; hot flow from previous chamber is fed to inlet of subsequent chamber where it is condensed and liquid phase of heavy hydrocarbons is separated in condensate receiver of first energy separating chamber; vortex energy separators are fed with additional flow where required pressure of gas is set; recirculated part of inlet flow is fed, twisted and ejected by said flow and is preheated by hot flow escaping from separating chamber; second flow of gas is directed to compensating expansion valve (detander); then, it is cooled in additional heat exchanger; liquid phase of heavy hydrocarbons is condensed and is separated from gas in outlet condensate receiver; then it is mixed with cold flow from one or more vortex energy separating chambers. Device proposed for realization of this method is provided with one or more vortex energy separators; all energy separators are provided with cone-shaped chambers which are interconnected in succession by means of pipe lines; hot flow outlet branch pipe of previous energy separator is pneumatically connected with nozzle inlet of subsequent energy separator and/or inlet heat exchanger through cutoff valves; mounted at end faces of cone-shaped energy distributing chambers are additional gas delivery tubes made in form of active nozzles of ejectors whose mixing chambers are mounted inside cone-shaped energy distributing chambers coaxially relative to additional gas delivery tubes and are pneumatically connected via flow mixer and cutoff valves with dispensing branch pipe and gas intake located behind inlet heat exchanger; inlet pressure regulator is pneumatically connected with pressure reducers of additional flows of vortex energy distributing chambers through matching unit and pressure setter. EFFECT: enhanced efficiency. 18 cl, 2 dwg