Description:
<jats:p>In line with the increase in the world population, natural gas, which has an
increasing share in fossil fuels, is nowadays transported throughout
pipelines in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and compressed natural
gas (CNG). Natural gas is preferred to be transported with CNG in terms of
optimum cost. CNG is reduced to a volume of 1/250 at 200 bar pressure in
filling facilities and is transported to multi-element gas containers or gas
tankers where pipelines do not reach. Although the highest cost for these
plants seems to be gas transportation costs, the design, infrastructure and
operational gaps, especially in plant management of the filling facilities
constitute the costs that are not significantly visible. In parallel with
the costs incurred, in this study, a pre-cooling process was actively
applied for cost-based improvement in a bulk CNG filling facility, while
operational optimization was aimed passively. The filling process of the
facility in 2016 was examined according to real data and pre-cooling was
made in 2017 by adding a ?chiller? to the filling process to increase the
filling rate to tankers. Thanks to the precooling in 2017, the filling
amount made to tankers increased by %7.23. In 2018, the filling process was
analyzed in detail according to the data of 2017 and the factors affecting
the filling rate were determined. According to these factors, the filling
operation has been optimized on a cost basis. Filling operations in 2018
have been optimized for factors varying from month to month and even day,
such as; temperature conditions, filling method, the structure of gas
tankers and filling platforms, ie the effect of the material used, personnel
effect and the filling rate of machines like chiller, compressor. After
optimization, the amount of filling made in 2018 increased by %4.36 compared
to 2017.</jats:p>