Electricity is a natural phenomenon that occurs throughout nature and takes many different forms. In electrical engineering, it is used for electric power, where electrical current is used to energize equipment. To generate electricity, we require either a fuel source such as coal, gas or a renewable energy source such as hydropower, wind, solar et cetera. Power electricity generation started in Nigeria as far back as 1896, with the development of a 20 megawatts power station established in Ijora in Lagos. The census of population taken by the European vital statistics, for Lagos Town and Island, Iddo Island and Ebute Metta Stated, 1881 (117), 1891 (143), 1896 (203), 1899 (239) etc. As at this 2017 the entire power electricity generation for Nigeria, with an estimated population of nearly 190. 3 Million is still below 5,000 megawatts. Going by the 1 megawatt for every thousand-conventional rule of the thumb for power generation, for an industrial nation, the Nigerian electricity energy need will be in the range of 190,000 megawatts. Although the governments have been making efforts, especially since 1999 to improve on the situation, their target is to achieve 20,000 megawatts by the year 2020, when the population should have gone beyond 200 million.
This investigation is motivated by three broad factors(a)the fact that in most crude oil terminals in Nigeria and around the world, some quantities of the flared associated stranded natural gas stream are by-passed through a gas scrubber, to the gas turbine which supplies electricity to the entire terminal operations facilities, (b)the fact, that the demand for electricity, both domestically and industrially are very high, (c)the fact, that the generation of electricity from the flared associated stranded natural gas would immensely reduce the quantity released into the atmosphere hence reduce its contribution to greenhouse gas (GHG) causing global warming.
This paper on the real-time monetization of the flared associated stranded natural gas in Nigeria via electric power generation reviewed the power electricity generation in Nigeria from inception to date, including all the contributions made by the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) and the Independent Power Producers (IPP). Since all changes of matter (Chemical reactions) involve energy in the form of heat. The heat of reaction for the combustion of 1 mole of methane CH4 (main component in natural gas) was obtained (212.8kcal) and used to estimated the overall heat energy or internal potential chemical energy on the flared sweetened associated stranded natural gas (4,102,031,454.08kcal or 17,162,899,603.87KJ) and the equivalent conversion to power electricity energy (59MW). The amount of electricity available from a fixed quantity of feed gas depends on Gas- turbine- Generator (GTG), efficiency or heat rate, calorific value of the gas et cetera.Typically, between 9,000 – 14500 scf/hr (254.7-410.35 m3/hr) of sweetened natural gas (methane) is burnt to generate one kilowatt hour of electricity. The existing possible conversion process techniques include the distributed generation i.e. micro-turbines, industrial gas-fired turbines, natural gas fuel cells; the centralized gas turbines and the aero-derivative units. The average monthly energy consumption (load audit) for an average Nigerian household, using some of the common appliances (table 6), is estimated to be 450kWh; which is in- between that of the United States (911kWh) and the United Kingdom (387.33kWh).