Abstract
Small-scale natural gas liquefaction processes have several clear advantages, particularly in the exploitation of ‘unconventional’ natural gas (NG) from sources such as difficult-to-access and offshore gas fields. Moreover, conventional liquefaction processes have a number of disadvantages such as high energy consumption, large cooling loads required in the refrigeration cycle, and non-uniform matching of cold and hot flows in liquified natural gas (LNG) heat exchanger (HE). The main objective of this study was to optimize the most commonly used mixed refrigerant process. The liquefaction performance of the optimized process was analyzed and the influence of gas parameters on the power consumption, exergy loss, freezing mixture circulation, and cooling water load were investigated. The results show that compressor power consumption can be reduced by 29.8%, the cooling water load can be reduced by 21.3%, and the system exergy efficiency can be increased by 41% with the optimized process. Furthermore, throttling and compression of the freezing mixture were increased during the refrigeration stage. It can be concluded that reducing the feed gas temperature and increasing the feed gas pressure can reduce the total power consumption, exergy loss, freezing mixture circulation, and cooling water load, which can significantly improve liquefaction performance.
Highlights
Global energy demand has rapidly increased over the past few decades and is expected to increase further in the coming years
Global energy consumption statistics show that the demand for oil is declining, and the search for alternative sources of energy is ushering in a golden age of natural gas (NG) (Wang Z. et al, 2020; Li et al, 2021)
The singlestage mixed refrigerant (SMR) liquefaction process consists of three units: a natural gas liquefaction unit, MRC unit, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage unit
Summary
Global energy demand has rapidly increased over the past few decades and is expected to increase further in the coming years. The design and development of liquefaction processes are of significant importance, small-scale NG liquefaction processes, which could offer significant value in the development of shale gas and coalbed methane, peak shaving of natural gas, and remote gas fields (Ikealumba and Wu, 2014). Bian et al (Bian et al, 2018; Bian et al, 2019) investigated the feasibility of using supersonic separation technology in the field of natural gas liquefaction, which provides the possibility of save space and simplifying the liquefaction process, and applied this technology (Bian et al, 2020a; Bian et al, 2020b; Liu et al, 2021)
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