India is one of the largest domestic consumers of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) in the world. LPG demand in India is expected to grow by 10% to reach 24 million tons in current financial year. The growth in LPG production at Indian refiners has been limited because of relatively higher emphasis on middle distillates production where margins are better. LPG imports would be more competitive than producing the fuel domestically and the country would remain dependent on imports to meet about 50% of its domestic needs. To meet the growing imports, Indian government is focusing on creating a solid distribution network and terminals to handle the additional volumes.
LPG is consisting of several hydrocarbons, however usually refers as propane and butane mixture. LPG is easy to store and transfer in liquid state and on liquefying it is always at boiling point at normal pressure. Hence LPG unloading is one of the crucial applications in entire value chain of LPG industry as it includes vapor recovery process.
Reciprocating or rotary vane compressors are being used at LPG terminals for unloading of tankers, railcars and ships and transfer LPG to stationary storage tanks. Most convenient way to unload LPG is to use reciprocating compressor with a four-way valve. For an example, reciprocating compressor would draw vapor from stationary storage tank and inject it in to LPG tanker through vapor line. Resulted pressure difference will cause transfer of liquid LPG from tanker to stationary storage tank. Once all liquid LPG is transferred from tanker, this process can be switch to vapor recovery with the help of four way valve. Just rotating a four way valve, compressor will remove vapor from top of tanker and discharge it in liquid section of stationary storage tank. This process is stopped when pressure inside tanker is equal 0.2-0.3 times of original tanker pressure. It is not recommended to go beyond it due to additional requirement of time and energy to recover small amount of vapor.
Corken, a subsidiary of IDEX Corporation offer a variety of vertical and horizontal reciprocating compressors variants for a broad range of pressure and flow requirements to meet your most demanding vapor recovery applications. To know more about our products, please visit http://www.idexindia.in/corken-compressors/
Alternatively, you can call us on 1800 267 9955 or email us at info.fmt@idexcorp.com
