Development and analysis of two novel methods for power generation from flare gas

This study is aimed to develop two feasible scenarios to reuse the flare gases. The conditions of gas flaring in a real gas refinery plant are measured and two feasible structures for electrical power generation from the flare gas are investigated as two scenarios. The first scenario is burning the mixture of the flare gas and a conventional fuel, while the second one is sending the flare gas to an intermediate stage of a gas turbine after burning it in a combustor. In order to improve the power generation and mitigate the environmental issues, a steam power cycle is coupled as a bottoming cycle in both scenarios. By considering the power generation status and parametric study through an EES coding, the scenarios are studied and compared. Considering the flow rate of the flare gas which is variable with respect to time, the results show that the first scenario is preferable from technical and economic aspects for all of the flare and natural gas flow rates except when the amount of flare flow rate in the plant is lower than 0.8 kg/s.