Eltacon engineered and manufactured a natural gas station for installation in Germany, designed and build according to the European regulations. The natural gas conditioning station is installed at a power plant, upstream of a gas turbine. The gas is filtered, measured, heated, and reduced to the correct pressure. The heating of the gas is done with steam in a double tube safety heat exchanger. During the start-up of the combined cycle gas turbine, the gas is pre-heated with an electrical heater.
The gas is first cleaned in a one-stage coalescer filter. The second step is the measurement of the mass flow with a Coriolis flowmeter. Heating is installed to compensate for the cooling of the gas by the Joule Thomson effect during the pressure reduction and to heat the gas 20 °C above the inlet temperature to have a margin between the actual temperature and the dewpoint temperature. This heating is done with a double tube (safety type) heat exchanger with hot steam coming from the power plant. The double tube design is based upon a tube within a tube. By doing this there is a safety barrier between the steam and the natural gas.
For start-up purposes when no hot steam is available yet, an electrical heater is installed downstream the double tube heater complete with thyristor control panel. Pressure reduction is done with a pilot operated self- acting pressure control valve. As a safety, there are two slam shut devices, one integrated at the pressure control valve and a second as a separate valve upstream of the pressure control valve.