The new-dawn for liquefied natural gas utilization: Empowering the transportation sector in Nigeria

The new-dawn for liquefied natural gas utilization: Empowering the transportation sector in Nigeria

Natural gas transportation

Liquefied natural gas

Gasoline

Computational fluid dynamics

Sustainable development

Heat flux

Mass transfer

Petroleum transportation

Gas industry

Proven reserves

Tanks (containers)

Atmospheric temperature

Cryogenics

Motor transportation

Natural gas deposits

Recurrent neural networks

It is a recurrent decimal that conventional transportation fuel is becoming a scarce commodity in Nigeria. Owing to Oil refineries producing below designed capacity and not meeting with demand for transportation fuel in the country. This has been investigated to result from weak maintenance culture, technical issues and increase in population etc. The result has led to several man-hour losses, overdependence on foreign imported refined products and many more not to mention. Presently, production network processes via the transportation sector has been hindered due to the paucity sustainability of fuel supply. Auspiciously, Nigeria holds an abundant of Natural Gas deposits of 187tcf proven reserves which is underutilized in several sectors, especially the transportation sector which accommodate about 75% of the total energy usage in the country. Hence, the idea of using LNG as a transportation fuel is well-thought-out. This paper looks at the thermodynamic effect and computational fluid considerations involved in applying the LNG as a transportation fuel to attain longer distance travel. A numerical simulation was conducted using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to determine the pressure distribution of the cryogenic tanks as well as the thermal effect of atmospheric disturbances through computational fluid dynamics. The result of atmospheric temperature is measured to be 25C and as a result inlet velocity is set at 183.2 K. The LNG temperature initialized at -155, while the tank pressure equals 1.2bar. The tank heating and the heat flux is simulated for 5 hours per day km. Initial volume of LNG cryogenic storage tank is 60 liters, initial LNG temperature of 162c, heat leakage per hour each day were measured to be 1.3 W and 1 bar, respectively. Initial mass flow rates of LNG Boil-off gas production (kg) 1%, 1.2%, 1.4%, 1.6% and 1.8%. Atmospheric Heat (KJ/h) and Mass Flow Rate the results are 0%, 0%, 0.000187% 0.000551% and 0.0009262% respectively. LNG can be used to transport vehicles to a very long distance of 1300Km without re-fill. Finally, the likelihood of utilizing LNG as a transportation fuel will be of immense economic and environmental benefit over Gasoline, diesel and CNG to the midstream sector. Copyright 2018, Society of Petroleum Engineers.

SPE Nigeria Annual International Conference and Exhibition 2018, NAIC 2018, August 6, 2018 - August 8, 2018

2018

Nwosi, Hezekiah Andrew

Appah, Dulu

Kinigoma, Boma

conferencePaper

10.2118/193437-ms