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Design and Simulation of the Acoustics of a Vent Silencer for the Natural Gas
Transportation Pipeline

Article  in  Technology Reports of Kansai University · June 2020

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 ISSN: 04532198
Volume 62, Issue 05, June, 2020

Design and Simulation of the Acoustics of a Vent

Silencer for the Natural Gas Transportation Pipeline
José Suarez Contreras1, Javier Carpintero Durango2, Jonathan Fabregas Villega3*

Universidad Autónoma del Caribe, GIIMA research group, Barranquilla, Colombia1,3 *

Department of Civil and Environmental, Universidad De La Costa, Calle 58 #55-66, 080002 Barranquilla,
Atlántico, Colombia2

Abstract— An analysis of the acoustic behavior of a vent silencer designed for a natural gas transport pipeline
is performed, using finite volume computational tools such as harmonic response and harmonic acoustics, to
find the operating frequency range in which the greater noise reductions for the system. From the results of
the sound pressure level profiles, the transmission losses of the system, the amplitude level of the noise
presented in the vent silencer was obtained. noting that for a frequency range of 500 to 1500 Hz a noise
reduction of 140 dB is obtained.

Keywords— Vent silencer, transmission loss, sound pressure level, harmonic acoustic, natural gas

1. Introduction
The transportation of natural gas through gas pipeline lines is carried out at high speeds ranging from 10 m/s
onwards, and in general in pipelines with diameters greater than 400 mm, but the design of these lines is not
only affected by these parameters, and by the lengths of transport to be covered but also by the sound effects
that the transport of natural gas comes to produce in areas near the generating plants, where high pressures
are usually used, so the analysis of Decibels becomes an important factor for the hearing safety of plant
operators. In works carried out by Paul Reiter et al. [1] developed an analysis through finite element
computational tools of a noise barrier for train transport lines, in which they compared three acoustic methods
to check the behavior of the noise barrier, obtaining good results for analytical models and by application of
finite elements, demonstrating the importance of the latter for allowing greater precision and range of working
frequencies. Meanwhile, Nicolás Morales and Dinesh Manocha [2] developed a hybrid algorithm, which
measures the propagation of sound by combining geometric characteristics and the frequency range in the
work area, to determine the location of noise points in office areas, making detection of the machines that
produce noise, obtaining good results. On the other hand, For the noise field produced by the Kilian Lackhove
et al. [3] modeled the coupling of the combustion effects as the flow field and noise generation as separate
systems, which were then coupled as a single simultaneous system, using various computational tools which
could reduce simulation costs compared to conventional software for these systems. As well as, Junji Huang
et al. [4] studied the behavior of acoustics on the pipe walls of a hypersonic ludwieg tube system used to
achieve airspeeds above 6 mach, this using numerical modeling obtaining the behavior of the acoustic
radiation from system components. Also, for the reduction of noise emitted by vehicle engines, the widely
used type of muffler is used, for all types of vehicles. Using different computational tool techniques, various
authors have simulated the effects of sound pressure and decibel reduction for the design and manufacture of
types of mufflers [5]–[13]. Therefore, for the present study, the computational tools harmonic acoustics and
harmonic response are used to model the acoustics of the design of a vent silencer for a natural gas pipeline
using the speed of sound for this substance as parameters.

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2. Materials and Methods

2.1 Vent Silencer Design

To simulate the effects of acoustics for the design of a vent silencer, it is necessary to design it with the
characteristics requested for the operation. Therefore, for the present dimensioning, there are the specifications
of size restrictions for a length of 4 m and a pipe diameter for a coupling of 18.5 in. And given the density of
the process substance such as natural gas, the rock wool noise reduction material was selected, of which its
properties are shown in Tables 1 and 2 below.

Table 1. Natural Gas properties

Natural Gas
Property Value Unit
Density 1.333 kg/m3
Isotropoc thermal conductivity 0.04212 W/m °C
Specific heat - Cp 2352 J/kg °C
Specific heat - Cv 1830 J/kg °C
Speed of sound 430 m/s
Viscosity 1.29E-5 Pa s
Bulk Viscosity 0.1723E-5 Pa s

Table 2. Rockwool properties

Rockwool
Property Value Unit
Fluid resistivity 20.000 N s/m4
Porosity 0.98
Tortuosity 1.01
Viscous characteristic length 8.5E-5 m
Thermal characteristic length 9E-5 m

Among the most important data for finite volume modeling, in addition to requiring the physical properties of
the transport substance, is the porosity of the acoustic insulation material that makes resistance to the passage
of a fluid, the tortuosity that is represented by the number of curves traveled in a given space, this variable is
directly related to the porosity of the material. The fluid resistivity depends on the velocity of the acoustic
particle in the holes of the material and is expressed as a function of the incident pressure [14]. The designed
vent silencer is shown in Figure 1 below, indicating the areas where the rockwool soundproofing material is
located. From the design it can be highlighted that an inlet diffuser was made, leaving a hollow cavity and
covered in its surroundings by rockwool, 17 tubes of 2 m in length made with perforated metal sheets with 2
mm holes were also used. its entire surface, homogeneously distributed and completely covered by rockwool
as shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1. Vent silencer design

The volume occupied by the gas inside the device is represented as a quarter of a cross-section since the
system is perfectly symmetrical, this saves computational resources and performs a more idealized analysis.
Once the geometry of the internal volumes of the vent silencer, corresponding to the space used by the gas in
its transportation and the acoustic insulation materials used, such as rock wool, were obtained, the parameters
that represent the elements were performed. the volumetric meshing, which was selected of the tetragonal type
taking as minimum sizes of 1 mm and maximum 2 cm, an adaptively generated configuration, it should be
noted that the device is approximately 4 m long, which would represent an unnecessary expenditure of
computational resources to do all elements of the minimum size in non-critical areas.

2.2 Mathematical Models

Among the mathematical models used, it is necessary to calculate the speed of sound for the working
substance, in this case, natural gas. The equation that allows the estimation of the speed of sound is shown
below.

𝛾𝑃
𝑐 =√𝜌 (1)

Where c is the speed of sound expressed in m/s of the substance, γ is the ratio of specific heat to constant
pressure and constant volume of the substance, P is the pressure and ρ is the density of the substance. And the
momentum equation used is.

⃗⃗⃗⃗𝑎
𝜕𝑣 4
𝜌0 𝜕𝑡
= −∇𝑃𝑎 + (3 𝜇 + 𝜇𝐵 ) ∇(∇𝑣
⃗⃗⃗⃗𝑎 ) (2)

The second-order equation of sound pressure is.

1 1 𝜕2 𝑃𝑎 4𝜇 1 𝜕𝑃
∇ ( ∇𝑃𝑎 ) − + ∇[ ∇ ( 2 𝑎)] =0 (3)
𝜌0 𝜌0 𝑐02 𝜕𝑡 2 3𝜌0 𝜌0 𝑐0 𝜕𝑡

Where ρ0 is the average density of the substance, μ is the dynamic viscosity of the substance, P is the acoustic
pressure.
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J. S. Contreras, J. C. Durango and J. F. Villega, 2020 Technology Reports of Kansai University

Working conditions were assigned as an inlet velocity ranging from 10, 25, 50, 100, and 150 m/s at a reference
operating pressure of 20 psi for the natural gas pipeline. The speeds were established respecting the allowable
erosion speed for the material and using speed ranges recommended by various authors [15], [16].

3. Results and Discussion

The profiles of the contours of sound pressure levels, the transmission loss of the system, as well as the results
of the levels of decibels reached different frequencies were obtained. Figure 2 below shows the sound
transmission losses in the system.

Figure 2. System transmission losses

In the previous figure, the graph of transmission loss of sound of the system is observed, it should be noted
that these transmission losses are independent of the speed of the flowing substance, that is, the behav ior is
due to the physical noise reduction properties that present the insulation material that is rockwool. As can be
seen in Figure 2, the system achieves the highest transmission losses in the frequency intervals of 500 to 1500
Hz, so it would be the ideal operating point since in this interval the system is capable of reducing 140 dB of
the maximum level reached by noise. and from this range at frequencies from 2000 to 8000 Hz the system can
reduce 50 dB of the maximum noise level reached. The contours of the profiles of the sound pressure levels
expressed in dB units corresponding to a given frequency are shown below.

Figure 3. Sound pressure level for a frequency of 1000 Hz

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Figure 3 shows the sound pressure levels expressed in dB, for a frequency of 1000 Hz using various values
of the inlet velocity of natural gas into the system. noting that the higher the input speed, the greater the
number of decibels reached. therefore, at a speed of 150 m/s a maximum of 210 dB is reached and a minimum
reduced by the vent silencer of 70 dB. While for a natural gas inlet velocity of 10 m/s, the maximum value
reached is 160 dB and a minimum value reduced by the vent silencer of 20 dB.

Figure 4. The sound pressure level for an inlet velocity of 150 m/s at various frequencies

In Figure 4 it can be seen that for the 1000 Hz frequency range the greatest noise reduction is achieved and
that starting from this frequency up to 8000 Hz the behavior of the sound remains almost constant.

Figure 5. Sound levels in the system at various frequencies

As mentioned above, the transmission losses of the system are independent of the fluid inlet velocity.
therefore, the reduction is carried out homogeneously for each speed that is applied in the system. It should
also be remembered that the higher the speed, the higher the noise level is reached, and the lower the speed,
the lower the noise level is reached. this is demonstrated in Figure 5.

4. Conclusions
The acoustic behavior of a vent silencer was simulated to reduce the noise produced by the transportation of
natural gas in a pipeline. The sound amplitude behaviors as well as the transmission losses of the system were
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obtained when using the rockwool insulation material and the geometric configuration presented for the vent
silencer. The optimum operating range to achieve the greatest noise reductions was found to be in the range
of 500 to 1500 Hz. A noise reduction of 210 dB to 70 dB was achieved for a maximum speed of 150 m/s of
natural gas input. and a noise reduction of 160 dB to 20 dB for a minimum speed of 10 m / s of natural gas
input.

5. References
[1] P. Reiter, R. Wehr, and H. Ziegelwanger, “Simulation and measurement of noise barrier sound-
reflection properties,” Appl. Acoust., vol. 123, pp. 133–142, 2017, doi: 10.1016/j.apacoust.2017.03.007.

[2] N. Morales and D. Manocha, “Optimizing source placement for noise minimization using hybrid
acoustic simulation,” CAD Comput. Aided Des., vol. 96, pp. 1–12, 2018, doi: 10.1016/j.cad.2017.09.007.

[3] K. Lackhove, A. Sadiki, and J. Janicka, “Simulation of a Premixed Flame Using Acoustic
Perturbation,” pp. 1–12, 2017.

[4] J. Huang, L. Duan, and M. M. Choudhari, “Direct numerical simulation of acoustic noise generation
from the nozzle wall of a hypersonic wind tunnel,” 47th AIAA Fluid Dyn. Conf. 2017, no. June, pp. 1–15,
2017, doi: 10.2514/6.2017-3631.

[5] W. H. Tan, T. S. Khor, and N. H. Zunaidi, “Development of acoustical simulation model for muffler,”
Int. J. GEOMATE, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 2385–2390, 2016, doi: 10.21660/2016.24.1178.

[6] Y.-C. Chang, M.-C. Chiu, and M.-R. Wu, “Acoustical simulation of a muffler internally inserted with
an extended tube using the FEM,” J. Inf. Optim. Sci., vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 47–62, 2019, doi:
10.1080/02522667.2017.1413042.

[7] M. H. Alkmim, J. Cuenca, L. De Ryck, and P. Göransson, “Model-based acoustic characterisation of

muffler components and extrapolation to inhomogeneous thermal conditions,” Proc. ISMA 2018 - Int. Conf.
Noise Vib. Eng. USD 2018 - Int. Conf. Uncertain. Struct. Dyn., pp. 3009–3020, 2018.

[8] S. K. Kakade and F. B. Sayyad, “Optimization of Exhaust Silencer for Weight and Size by Using
Noise Simulation for Acoustic Performance,” vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 49–60, 2017.

[9] D. P. Jena and S. N. Panigrahi, “Numerically estimating acoustic transmission loss of a reactive
muffler with and without mean flow,” Meas. J. Int. Meas. Confed., vol. 109, pp. 168–186, 2017, doi:
10.1016/j.measurement.2017.05.065.

[10] R. Talebitooti and A. M. C. Khameneh, “Modeling and simulation of the acoustic behavior of a
muffler in a passenger car exhaust system,” vol. 6, no. 1, p. 2018, 2018.

[11] R. Kaiser, C. Hinterberger, and F. Ezquerra Larodé, “Transient Simulation of Flow Noise in Exhaust
Mufflers,” MTZ Worldw., vol. 80, no. 11, pp. 70–77, 2019, doi: 10.1007/s38313-019-0127-8.

[12] Y. Zhang, P. Wu, Y. Ma, H. Su, and J. Xue, “Analysis on acoustic performance and flow field in the
split-stream rushing muffler unit,” J. Sound Vib., vol. 430, pp. 185–195, 2018, doi: 10.1016/j.jsv.2018.04.025.
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[13] M. Ranjbar and H. Arslan, “On Muffler Design for Transmitted Noise Reduction,” Int. Symp.
Multidiscip. Stud. Innov. Technol. Proc. B., no. November, pp. 7–11, 2017.

[14] Z. Laly, N. Atalla, and S. Meslioui, “Acoustical modeling of micro-perforated panel at high sound
pressure levels using equivalent fl uid approach,” J. Sound Vib., pp. 1–25, 2018, doi:
10.1016/j.jsv.2017.09.011.

[15] G. Guandalini, P. Colbertaldo, and S. Campanari, “Dynamic modeling of natural gas quality within
transport pipelines in presence of hydrogen injections,” Appl. Energy, 2016, doi:
10.1016/j.apenergy.2016.03.006.

[16] K. A. Pambour, R. Bolado-lavin, and G. P. J. Dijkema, “An integrated transient Model for simulating
the Operation of Natural Gas Transport Systems,” J. Nat. Gas Sci. Eng., 2015, doi:
10.1016/j.jngse.2015.11.036.

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