Case Studies for SMR Natural Gas Liquefaction Plant by Capacity in Small Scale Gas Wells through Cost Analysis

Abstract

-Natural gas liquefaction process which spends a huge amount energy is operated under cryogenic conditions. Thus, many researchers have studied on minimizing energy consumption of LNG plant. However, a few studied for cost optimization have performed. This study focused on the cost analysis for the single mixed refrigerant (SMR) process, one of the simplest natural gas liquefaction process, which has different capacity. The process capacity is increased from 1 million ton per annum (MTPA) to 2.5 MTPA by 0.5 MTPA steps. According to the increase of plant size, only flow rate of natural gas and mixed refrigerant are increased and other operating conditions are fixed. Aspen Economic Evaluator(v.8.7) is used for the cost analysis and six tenths factor rule is applied to obtain multi stream heat exchanger cost data which is not supplied by Aspen Economic Evaluator. Moreover, the optimal plant sizes for different sizes of gas wells are found as the result of applying plant cost to small scale gas wells, 20 million ton (MT), 40 MT, and 80 MT. Through this cost analysis, the foundation is built to optimize LNG plant in terms of the cost.