This application discloses an invention which is related, generally and in various embodiments, to the conversion of liquefied natural gas from raw gaseous natural gas.
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is raw gaseous natural gas that has been pre-processed to remove unwanted impurities and cooled to a liquid state for storage, shipping and further use. Typical processes for the production of liquefied natural gas from raw natural gas include a natural gas pre-treatment stage, a gas compression stage, and a gas liquefaction stage. The pre-treatment stage is required to remove inherent impurities such as carbon dioxide, heavy hydrocarbons, mercury and water to yield a product (LNG) that is primarily methane, usually of the order of 85% methane or better. This is necessary since the impurities have thermodynamic properties which can severely encumber the gas liquefaction process if they are not removed. The gas compression stage is achieved through the use of compressors which can vary in types. Generally positive displacement type compressors are employed and screw types and reciprocating types are generally preferred. Traditionally, the gas liquefaction stage requires the use of Mixed Refrigerant (MR), Nitrogen, Carbon Dioxides or other fluids to serve as the cooling medium or refrigerant in an independent refrigeration cycle employed as part of the gas liquefaction process. These refrigerants operate in closed loops, i.e. no refrigerant is theoretically consumed in these refrigeration cycles. Practically, the compressors and seal systems used in these refrigeration cycles are not completely leak tight and some amount of refrigerant will leak from the refrigeration cycle during the gas liquefaction process. Consequently, for all these refrigeration cycles the leaked refrigerant must be replaced by adding “make-up” refrigerant to the cycle. The “make-up” system involves providing the make-up refrigerant and the additional equipment required for handling this extra refrigerant, all of which adds cost and negatively impacts the refrigeration cycle efficiency and hence the liquefaction process efficiency. The use of hermetically sealed compressors, which exhibits zero refrigerant loss, has been considered for traditional systems but when compared to the cost of “make-up” components and other operating considerations including serviceability these have not been found to be economically advantageous compared to compressors utilizing mechanical seals.
Following gas compression and liquefaction, the liquid gas is then stored in well-insulated storage tanks or vessels designed to keep the cold boiling liquid at its liquid temperature.
Using LNG quality gas as a refrigerant in the production of LNG has been explored as a viable alternative to traditional refrigerants such as described in above. This interest is fueled by the fact that no make-up refrigerant or additional equipment would be required if LNG quality gas was employed as the refrigerant in the liquefaction process. This concept has been employed in small scale LNG production applications (small scale LNG has been loosely defined as the production of LNG in quantities up to 100,000 gallons per day), and there is at least one design that is based on this concept. LNG production systems utilizing LNG quality gas as a refrigerant faces the daunting task of achieving industry established standard LNG temperature (−260° F.) at atmospheric pressure. This is because of the challenge posed in using a gas to cool itself to its liquid temperature. To date, and with the exception of this invention which produces LNG at −259.1° F. at atmospheric pressure, no small scale system utilizing LNG quality gas as a refrigerant has been able to produce LNG this close to the industry standard LNG temperature and pressure (“standard LNG”).
Contrary to arguments put forward by some equipment designers and vendors that LNG does not have to meet this standard condition to be acceptable, the industry that uses LNG almost always desires LNG that is, or at most one or two degrees from, −260° F. In addition, the colder the LNG the greater the energy density which is a preferential state and the primary motivation for desiring to liquefy the gas. It is true that achieving standard LNG conditions of temperature and pressure is difficult to realize, hence users of LNG oftentimes has little choice but to accept “warmer LNG for their operations. This invention overcomes this problem.
A process has been designed to convert 0.7 to 10 million standard cubic foot per day of raw (associated and/or non-associated) gaseous natural gas (NG) from a transmission source into liquefied natural gas (LNG), in quantities ranging from 7,000 to 100,000 gallons per day. The process equipment is mobile/modular/scalable (MMS), skid-mounted, and fully integrated to be placed at a suitable site for continuous operation with minimal supervision. Embodiments of the invention provide a mobile, modular and scalable (MMS) system for the small scale production of LNG There are several differences and advantages of this invention over typical systems, but the main ones include the following:
(1) System Configuration—All known engineered LNG production systems currently in operation essentially utilize the same type of equipment, namely a pre-process gas cleaning systems (typically a molecular sieve (mole sieve) or an amine system), gas compressors, expansion devices (which can be Joule Thompson valves or turbo expanders), and refrigeration systems to serve as gas pre-coolers or after-coolers in the gas liquefaction process. The primary difference between these gas liquefaction systems is the manner in which the equipment are arranged or configured. This invention, while employing equipment commonly encountered in LNG production systems, also boasts a configuration that is different from all other known systems in operation or in development. This unique configuration allows the discretizing of various functional parts of the system for easy fabrication and system production, uses less equipment, has a lower field installation time, and lower specific power compared to others. Discrete systems in this invention include the following:
(a) A gas pre-treatment unit—The gas treatment unit comprises a mole sieve system designed to remove impurities, including heavy components, carbon dioxide and water, from the feed gas stream. Clean gas (product gas) leaving the mole sieve is passed to the gas compression system and all waste or tail gas from the cleaning process are used wholly in other parts of the system (e.g. the power unit for providing power to the system).
(b) A gas pre-cooling system—This system employs a propane or propylene chiller which is used for pre-cooling the gas after it leaves the gas compressor unit. This standalone system provides cooling via a closed cycle lithium bromide absorption chiller unit which does not require “make-up” water for operation. This system design in this invention is unique and is not known to have been employed in small scale LNG production.
(c) A six stream heat exchanger unit—This system is uniquely designed to cool the product gas leaving the gas pre-cooler via fluid streams entering the exchanger from a turbo-expander, and from flash cooling resulting from thermal expansion of the gas via Joule Thompson valves. The configuration of this stand-alone heat exchanger, never before considered, is at the heart of the gas liquefaction process. It results in a simpler design, less equipment and piping, more efficient utilization of energy, and lower system cost.
(d) An absorption chiller unit—This stand-alone closed cycle lithium bromide absorption chiller unit utilize waste heat generated from the power generator unit to produce chilled water for equipment cooling. Due to its closed cycle design it requires no “make up” water system.
Since this chiller receives its energy from waste heat, the efficiency of the overall plant design is improved. Additionally, the fact that no water is required, the location for installation of the overall plant is independent of water for operations.
(e) A combined heat and power (CHP) unit—The entire liquefaction system is powered by a gas engine generator unit designed such that waste heat can be recovered for reuse. The fuel gas for the power unit is comprised of a mixture of source/pipeline gas and tail (also called waste gas) from the gas cleaning mole sieve unit.
(2) Gas Compression—This invention takes advantage of the lower specific power consumption associated with higher gas compression pressures up to about 870 psig for small scale LNG production systems as shown in
(3) Heat Exchanger—A unique feature of this invention is the multi stream brazed aluminum heat exchanger (BAHX) design used in the liquefaction process. Typical natural gas liquefaction systems, even those utilizing BAHX, employ the common two and three stream exchangers in their liquefaction processes. The modelling of multistream cryogenic liquefaction systems poses a significant challenge to designers, and there are no known multipass exchanger in small scale LNG application that utilizes more than three streams. This invention models and uses a single six stream BAHX which reduces the number of process exchangers required in the liquefaction process, a significant reduction in equipment footprint and cost.
(4) LNG Specification—No known small scale LNG system currently in operation produces LNG at the temperature and pressure of −259.1° F. and one atmosphere respectively as this invention does. The closest reported temperature of other systems is more than 7° F. warmer which is significant in the LNG industry, especially if the LNG will be transported over long distances. While 7° F. degrees may seem small, overcoming this temperature difference to get to the ideal LNG temperature of −260° F. when using LNG quality gas as the system refrigerant is a significant improvement over other competing designs.
(5) Absorption Chilling and Waste Heat Reuse—Waste heat re-use to produce cooling is commonly used in thermodynamic systems to reduce energy cost. Nowadays, an additional consideration is waste heat reuse to reduce environmental impacts. Conventional refrigeration chillers have been used in small scale LNG applications. The refrigeration chillers are generally designed with air cooling systems or with water cooling systems. Systems utilizing water cooling are general designed with a cooling tower to dissipate the heat. Cooling tower systems require treated water, and a continual supply of “make-up” water to account for drift and evaporative water loss. With the exception of this invention, no existing system utilizes a closed cycle absorption chiller for producing refrigeration effects in a small scale LNG production system. In this invention, the absorption chiller can utilize waste heat from the power unit and a lithium bromide solution as a refrigerant to produce chilled water for equipment cooling and does not require the use of any water. Product gas does not come in direct contact with any fluid in the absorption chiller system. Due to the closed cycle design of the chiller, this low pressure, stand-alone absorption chiller system produces no emissions, and no drift or evaporative water loss from the system, and only minor heat dissipation.
The design of this LNG liquefaction process utilizing discrete, stand-alone functional containerized and/or skid mounted systems promotes the easy assembly and dis-assembly of the system. This is deliberately done such that the entire system can be fabricated in modules for ease of transportation and assembly wherever the system is required for operations. Additionally, multiple individual compression, pre-cooling, gas liquefaction and LNG storage systems can be connected to a single gas pretreatment unit, or be grouped in combination with identical systems as an expanded process to produce various quantities of LNG.
Given that the entire system is an assembly of discrete systems which can be fabricated in a wide range of location and transported to the site for quick assembly, and given that the system can be configured to yield different LNG capacities, the system is described as modular, mobile, and scalable. Multiple configurations of the gas process system are shown in
The system has no process gases or liquids leave the process. The system provides connections/disconnections for power and system controls among the modules. The system has the ability to be discretely grouped in combination with identical systems as an expanded process to produce increased output of LNG.
Conceptually, the system 10 (
NG G1 to be processed first enters the unit through the gas pre-treatment module 12 where it is pre-treated to remove inherent impurities such as carbon dioxide, heavy hydrocarbons, mercury and water. The natural gas supply G0 is a source of pipeline quality or boil-off (BOG) gas from LNG storage tanks or vessels, wherein the natural gas supplied to the pre-treatment module 12 has a carbon dioxide content of the order of 2 to 2.5 percent, saturated water, or water content of the order 50 to 100 ppm or less. The natural gas carbon dioxide content from the pre-treatment module 12 is of the order of ≤50 ppm and water content from the pre-treatment module 12 is of the order ≤1.0 ppm. The pre-treatment module 12 utilizes a pressure swing adsorption (PSA) micro-sieve technology using a molecular sieve which works continuously to remove impurities from the flowing gas stream. The resulting clean gas is primarily methane, suitable for liquefaction. The pre-treatment module 12 includes multiple tanks, and regenerates the treatment media in such a way that while some parts of the module are processing incoming gas, other parts are regenerating the media for reuse. The gas pre-treatment module is vendor-supplied in accordance with process equipment specifications. Pre-treatment module 12 is in fluid communication G2 with a multi-stage compressor 24, 42, in fluid communication with the natural gas supply G0, G1, and in fluid communication G4 with power module 20.
Following the pre-treatment module 12, the resulting gas stream G2 then enters the gas compression module 14 which includes an absorption chiller 22, and the multi-stage compressor including a primary gas compressor 24 and a recycle gas compressor 42. The primary gas compressor 24 compresses the gas stream to a pressure of about 800 psig to 934.7 psig to facilitate the remaining stages of the process. This pressure range of compression promotes the production of LNG at a low specific power consumption as can be observed from
Referring to
The return hot water leaves the evaporator 52 sufficiently cold to be used for equipment cooling. Hot waste gas from the gas engine, if provided, or direct fired heaters supplies the thermal energy required for absorption chiller 22 (
Following the gas compression module 14 (
The system 10 is designed such that when the power module 20 (
The storage module 18 (
The mass ratio of natural gas conversion to LNG to the amount used for powering the system 10 is about 0.85 to about 0.15, which is the most efficient process per available data in a “natural gas to natural gas liquefaction system.”
Although the invention has been described in terms of particular embodiments in an application, one of ordinary skill in the art, in light of the teachings herein, can generate additional embodiments and modifications without departing from the spirit of, or exceeding the scope of, the claimed invention. Accordingly, it is understood that the drawings and the descriptions herein are proffered by way of example only to facilitate comprehension of the invention and should not be construed to limit the scope thereof.
This application claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. § 119(e) of the earlier filing date of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 62/262,970 filed on Dec. 4, 2015, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein.
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