Cascade utilization of LNG cold energy by integrating cryogenic energy storage, organic Rankine cycle and direct cooling

Abstract

Utilizing LNG cold energy in different temperature ranges with distinctive approaches is a promising option to achieve a high thermodynamic efficiency. This paper proposed a novel LNG cold energy cascade utilization (CES-ORC-DC-LNG) system by integrating cryogenic energy storage (CES), organic Rankine cycle (ORC), and direct cooling (DC) to recover LNG cold energy in the low, middle, and high temperature ranges, respectively. The optimal components and their respective fractions of the mixed working fluids in ORCs, and other key parameters were simultaneously determined by a simulation-based optimization approach which was developed in this study. Then, comprehensive energetic and exergetic analyses were conducted to compare the proposed system performance with the system in the literature to highlight the superior thermodynamic performance. The results indicated that the net power output of the CES-ORC-DC-LNG system was 103.30 kW, which was 22.48% higher than the base case. The optimal compositions of the mixed working fluids in ORC-1 (ethane: 23.73%, ethylene: 15.01%, R134a: 20.17%, and R152a: 41.09%) and ORC-2 (ethylene: 60.14%, R134a: 38.73%, R1270: 0.54%, and R134a: 0.59%) were distinctive with the net power output of 13.89 and 14.46 kW, respectively. The round trip efficiency of the proposed system was 141.88% with 19% increment compared with the base case. Furthermore, the exergetic efficiency of the CES-ORC-DC-LNG system was 73.92% which was 5.17% higher than the base case. Thus, the CES-ORC-DC-LNG system is an energy efficiency LNG cold energy cascade utilization system and can be a potential technology for large-scale cryogenic energy storage.