Abstract
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is a clear and promising fossil fuel which emits less greenhouse gas (GHG) and has almost no environmentally damaging sulfur dioxide compared with other fossil fuels. An LNG import terminal is a facility that regasifies LNG into natural gas, which is supplied to industrial and residential users. Modeling and optimization of the LNG terminals may reduce energy consumption and GHG emission. A mixed-integer nonlinear programming model of the LNG terminal is developed to minimize the energy consumption, where the numbers of boil-off gas (BOG) compressors and low-pressure (LP) pumps are considered as integer variables. A case study from an actual LNG terminal is carried out to verify the practicality of the proposed method. Results show that the proposed approach can decrease the operating energy consumption from 9.15% to 26.1% for different seasons.
Highlights
In recent years, environmental protection and the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions have become a hot spot worldwide [1,2]
The variables are input to GAMS to obtain the optimal recirculation flow rate and number of LP pumps in operation by solving the model (LNGT-OOM)
An MINLP model was formulated, which determined whether the pumps were running or on standby, and the number of compressor level was selected as a binary variable
Summary
Environmental protection and the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions have become a hot spot worldwide [1,2]. An excessive amount of the BOG in a tank can result in safety issues, whereas a scant amount of the BOG causes an unnecessary waste of energy [23] These two issues are important to address in the design and optimization of an LNG terminal. BOG compressors are used to remove extra gas and ensure the safety of tanks Many studies investigate the design optimization of BOG handling process to improve the energy efficiency while ensuring the system safety [32,33,34,35]. A typical LNG terminal was studied, which consists of tanks, pumps, recondensers, compressors, and vaporizers. An industrial case study in an actual LNG terminal is employed to indicate the effectiveness of the proposed method
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