Technical Paper
An Experimental Study of the Effects of n-/iso-Butanes and Pentanes on the Methane Number of Natural Gas Mixtures
2021-04-06
2021-01-0524
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) plays an increasingly important role as a climate-friendly fuel for a sustainable mobility. Compared to diesel, LNG has a CO2 reduction potential of around 20%. There is also the possibility of reducing GHG by adding biogas or synthetic natural gas. The Methane Number (MN) characterizes the knocking properties of gaseous fuels and was defined by AVL. There is no standardized measurement procedure for the MN. Instead, there are some algorithms to calculate the MN from the gas mixture composition. Most of them are based on the original AVL measurement data, e.g. the NPL algorithm. In the AVL study, the different knocking properties of n- and iso-components of the alkanes were not investigated. This paper focuses on the experimental investigation of the knock resistance of different alkanes in LNG mixtures and the improvement of the NPL algorithm based on these results.