Discussion about reference gas for multi-source natural gases in light of interchangeability

With the development of natural gas industry in China, more and more cities introduce natural gas from different sources to improve supply reliability. Accordingly interchangeability problem begin to emerge. In this paper a new approach was put forward to define a suitable “reference gas”, with reference to which gases of different compositions can be interchangeable. By means of AGA and Weaver Indices, calculations were made to analyze the interchangeability between natural gases from 9 sources in Guangdong Province. Results show that Yuexi LNG2, whose Wobbe index falls in the middle of Richest and Leanest, seems to be a good candidate. Experiments were carried out to test the percentage of qualified efficiency and CO emission, according to Chinese National standard. It turned out 80% of sampled gas cookers can maintain and 80% gas sources can be interchangeable when Yuexi LNG2 is defined as the reference gas.