A Method and Apparatus for Direct Enthalpy Rise Measurement for Gas Compression

Gas property prediction is necessary for proper design of compressors. Equations of state are utilized to predict the thermo-physical gas properties needed for such calculations. These are semi-empirical models that allow the calculation of thermodynamic properties such as density, enthalpy, and speed of sound of gas mixtures for known pressures and temperature. Currently, there is limited or no data publically available to verify the results of these equation of state calculations for the range of pressures, temperatures, and gas compositions relevant to many oil and gas applications. Especially for isentropic enthalpy head (i.e., the enthalpy rise along constant entropy lines), which is a critical parameter required to accurately design and performance test compressors, limited public domain data are available for equation of state validation. In this paper, a method and test apparatus is described to measure compression enthalpy rise directly. In this apparatus, a test gas is compressed using a fast acting piston inside an adiabatic autoclave. Test results are then corrected using calibration efficiencies from a known reference gas compression process at a similar Reynolds number. The paper describes the test apparatus, calibration, measurement methodology, and test results for one complex hydrocarbon gas composition at elevated temperatures and pressures. An uncertainty analysis of the new measurement method is also presented and results are compared to several equations of state. The results show that commonly used equations of state significantly underpredicted the compression enthalpy rise for the test gas case by more than 6%.