Study on the Snubber as a Pressure Pulsation Damper in Reciprocating Hydrogen Compressing System

Due to rapid exhaustion of fossil fuel by its diversified and increased uses, its harmful effects on environment, energy capturing politics of different countries, and recent increase in the price of fossil fuels have added impetus to the movement towards alternative energy. The green energy based hydrogen has been becoming popular recently for its renewability and pollutant free properties. In all steps of hydrogen gas energy utilization: production, storage, distribution and end-use, compression is essential because of its low volumetric energy content. Since hydrogen will replace the role of fossil fuel, so all approach done in this field should be efficient and economic. It forms high pulsation waveform after passing through reciprocating compressor. A pulsation damper- “Snubber” is then used to reduce these harmful pulsation waveforms. An experiment has been conducted to investigate the role of snubber in regulating pressure pulsation developed in reciprocating compression. In order to get the detail pressure values at different parts of this snubber system, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis is applied. A comparative study of pressure pulsation by experiment and CFD model are performed. CFD estimates pressure pulsation reductions very close to that of experiment.