Maximization of energy recovery inside supersonic separator in the presence of condensation and normal shock wave

Natural gases provide around a quarter of energy consumptions around the globe. Supersonic separators (3S) play multifaceted role in natural gas industry processing, especially for water and hydrocarbon dew point corrections. These states of the art devices have minimum energy requirement and favorable process economy compared to conventional facilities. Their relatively large pressure drops may limit their application in some situations. To maximize the energy recovery of the dew point correction facility, the pressure loss across the 3S unit should be minimized. The optimal structure of 3s unit (including shock wave location and diffuser angle) is selected using simultaneous combination of normal shock occurrence and condensation in the presence of nucleation and growth processes. The condense-free gas enters the non-isentropic normal shock wave. The simulation results indicate that the normal shock location, pressure recovery coefficient and onset position strongly vary up to a certain diffuser angle (β = 8°) with the maximum pressure recovery of 0.88 which leads to minimum potential energy loss. Computational fluid dynamic simulations show that separation of boundary layer does not happen for the computed optimal value of β and it is essentially constant when the inlet gas temperatures and pressures vary over a relatively broad range.