Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Plants
From Natural Gas
Driven by growing global energy demands for clean energy, liquefied natural gas (LNG) is replacing traditional oil-based fuels in marine and heavy vehicle engines, power generation and process industries. We have been providing customized LNG plants for many years. Today, those plants demonstrate the technical excellence of our applied LNG technology for merchant and peak-shaving LNG plants.
Technology Overview
To deliver the same levels of quality at lower cost and less time, the StarLNG™ plant standardizes and optimizes small to mid-scale LNG plants featuring a wide set of process variations. This “process toolbox” is designed to cover about 90% of real-life operating conditions. It offers the following major benefits:
- Same safety levels as world-scale LNG plants
- Fast-track EPC execution schedule
- Reduced CAPEX
- Highly efficient LIMUM® process, easy to operate
- Modularized units for pre-treatment, process and main pipe racks
- Toolbox concept with many options
The StarLNGTM plant offers many pre-engineered alternatives for a fully modularized plant – combining superb safety, reliability, ease of operations and efficiency with competitive prices and shortest execution schedule.
With some simple adjustments, however, StarLNG™ supports LNG capacity ranges between 100 and 3,000 tpd using the same modularized plant design.
Integrated LNG and NGL Plants: The future of LNG Today
The StarLNGL™ unit is an addition to the StarLNG™ family, providing more flexibility in the constantly changing natural gas and liquids market. This concept utilizes the heat integration of the NGL plant by taking a portion of the cold vapor stream from the recovery column, thus improving the efficiency of the LNG and NGL units.
StarLNGL™, the integrated Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) technology, uses proven design concepts to enhance LNG production in existing and new NGL recovery plants. It can be used with a variety of NGL recovery technologies including CRYO-PLUS™, GSP and RSV. Compared with a stand-alone LNG plant, the integrated StarLNGL™ solution provides the following benefits:
- No impact on availability or reliability of the NGL recovery plant
- Same or higher levels of ethane and propane recovery
- Increased NGL plant capacity
- Less capital expenditure
- Highly efficient process
- Shared maintenance
- Lower operating cost
- Cold vapor feed to the StarLNGL™ unit
- Minimum tie-ins to existing NGL unit required
- On-spec LNG ethane and propane recovery
- Standard refrigeration technology
- Refrigeration options include no hydrocarbon storage
- Compact rotating equipment design
World-scale LNG plants produce the majority of liquefied natural gas products traded globally. They range in capacity between a few million tonnes per annum (tpa) and more than 10 million tpa. Our patented Mixed Fluid Cascade (MFC®) process, jointly developed with Statoil for baseload LNG plants, is designed for highest efficiency and reliability in any environment and climate.
Floating production and storage unitsRising demand for natural gas is fueling interest in offshore gas reserves. These reserves can only be accessed with floating facilities capable of liquefying and storing natural gas. Together with SBM Offshore, we have developed an LNG concept that can be used to design a safe, robust and economical Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) facility. Our LNG FPSO is designed for a liquefaction capacity of up to 2.5 million tpa, utilizing our proven LIMUM® (Linde Multi-Stage Mixed Refrigerant) process. Our LNG FPSO is designed as a stand-alone system for field development and, as such, has extensive pre-treatment facilities and works independently of typical LNG infrastructures – eliminating the need for new pipelines, platforms, separate by-product storage, etc.
LNG terminalsLNG is produced in liquefaction plants close to the natural gas reserves and shipped to LNG terminals to be delivered to local markets. The gas is distributed from the terminal to the customer in liquid or gaseous form, and this may require additional processing steps.
We design terminal safety features including installations to capture boil-off gas that is released at terminals. Our integrated design approach ensures highly competitive terminal operations.
Flat-bottom storage tanksThe most visible part of a terminal is the LNG storage unit. Flat-bottom tanks designed to cope with the cryogenic temperature of LNG at atmospheric pressure are the most common solution for the intermediate storage of large volumes of LNG.
Linde Engineering covers every step in the flat-bottom storage tank installation chain, offering tailored solutions to meet customer requirements worldwide.
A flat-bottom storage tank is never a stand-alone delivery, however. It is just one part of a larger installation. Cryogenic pumps installed in the storage tank export the LNG from the tank to regasification or filling stations. The terminal’s trailer and rail car filling stations act as further distribution hubs. Alternatively, trucks and ships can fill up on LNG directly at fueling stations installed at the terminal.
LNG fueling stationsLinde Engineering delivers LNG and LCNG refueling stations supplying both liquid and compressed natural gas for vehicles. Designed and built by Cryostar, a member of the Linde Engineering Division, our LNG and LCNG refueling stations deliver natural gas for refueling vehicles, either in liquid or gaseous form, or combined
Ethane removalThe high ethane content of shale gas currently entering pipelines is on the rise, potentially causing LNG product to be off-spec. Stratification in LNG storage tanks may also occur. To address the problem, Linde has developed standard ethane removal technologies.
Ethane removal must be (1) low cost and (2) energy efficient while improving production and meeting quality specifications. The key components are a Linde-designed and manufactured plate fin heat exchanger and a stripping column with an auxilliary refrigeration unit. The plate fin heat exchanger has a compact footprint, saving space and cost. Our solution provides three options to meet site-specific needs:
- Upstream of liquefaction unit (downstream of dehydration)
- Tie-in to liquefaction unit
- Downstream of liquefaction unit and upstream of LNG storage
Selection depends on existing plant equipment. For instance, tying into an existing liquefaction unit provides for the lowest LNG losses, but is highly dependent on the cold box design. Linde can evaluate the existing plant and provide a recommendation for the most economical solution.
Our pre-engineered design mitigates project schedule and operating risks, delivering:
- Complete process design
- Modularized equipment layout
- Short delivery time
- Easy tie-in with minimal interference on operations
- Minimum on-site construction
- Simple and robust technology
- Optimized energy efficiency
- Little or no down time for the facility
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