Optimization of Geometric Dimensions of Fire Tube and Heat Coil Used in City Gate Stations Heaters

Prior to entering to the throttling valve of the City Gate Stations (CGS), high-pressure natural gas flow in pipelines is transmitted through Water Bath Indirect Heaters (WBIH), which is increasing its temperature to compensate for the temperature drop caused by the Joule-Thomson effect and preventing the occurrence of the hydration phenomenon, gas freezing, and subsequent blockage of the gas flow path. Because of feeding of processed gas of the network on a large scale, optimizing the WBIHs has a lot of significance. In the present study, each WBIH is simulated by a type of thermodynamic machine, consisting of two distinct thermal systems. According to the problem geometry and governing equations, the thermodynamic analysis of these two systems results in the formulation of a relationship between their thermal efficiencies together and the definition of a parameter was defined as the Thermodynamic Similarity Coefficient (TSC). Then, the results showed that always, a constant logarithmic relationship exists between of the Number of Heat Transfer Units (NTU) values difference of the fire tube and heat coil of the WBIHs with their TSC as well as a constant power relationship between their NTU values ratio with this coefficient too. Finally, by solving the equation system obtained from these two relations, it was possible to determine the optimal values of NTU for the fire tube and heat coil as functions of TSC of the WBIH and to achieve the relationship between their optimum geometric dimensions together in the most ideal heat transfer state with a maximum relative error of about 13%.