Integration of vertical ground-coupled heat pump into a conventional natural gas pressure drop station: Energy, economic and CO2 emission assessment

City gate stations receive high pressure natural gas and decrease the pressure by throttle valves. Concurrent with the natural gas pressure reduction, the temperature also drops. Thus, to prevent blocking of the downstream pipeline by the liquid and solid particles, natural gas must be preheated before pressure reduction. Heaters utilized for preheating task, have a low thermal efficiency and consume a large amount of fuel. In addition to the high fuel consumption, they release a huge amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. Therefore, the present study proposes a new system for in-situ fuel consumption elimination at these stations. It utilizes vertical ground-coupled heat pump system as a renewable source of energy to preheat natural gas stream. The system performance was studied at two different climatic conditions of Iran which have also two different natural gas compositions. Results show that the system is completely capable to eliminate in-situ fuel consumption of city gate stations; however, by considering indirect fuel consumption of electrical heat pumps, the system fuel consumption reduction potential was calculated over 65%. It is also able to reduce CO2 emission up to 79%. The discounted payback period is computed around two years, which proves the suitability of offered system.