Adsorbed natural gas


Adsorbed natural gas is a process to store natural gas. Natural gas burns cleanly as a fuel, making it useful in many vehicles and applications such as cooking, heating or running generators. It contains mostly methane and ethane. These light gases have very high vapor pressure at ambient temperatures, and their storage requires either high-pressure compression, adsorbent systems or an extreme reduction of temperature. In the ANG process, natural gas adsorbs to a porous adsorbent at relatively low pressure and ambient temperature, solving both the high-pressure and low-temperature problems. If a suitable adsorbent is used, it is possible to store more gas in an adsorbent-filled vessel than in an empty vessel at the same pressure. The amount of adsorbed gas depends on pressure, temperature and adsorbent type. Since this adsorption process is exothermic, an increase or decrease of pressure or an increase or decrease of temperature enhances the efficiency of the adsorption and desorption process. Activated carbon is an adsorbent with high surface area that can be used in ANG storage tanks. Currently, researchers are developing new adsorbents with higher adsorption ratio to optimize this process.