Optimal design and operation of a C3MR refrigeration system for natural gas liquefaction

Integration of CO 2 cryogenic removal with a natural gas pressurized liquefaction process using gas expansion refrigeration

“…Aspelund et al [18], Mokarizadeh Haghighi Shirazi and Mowal [19], Morin et al [20], and Xu et al [21] employed optimization to minimize the power required by single mixed refrigerant processes. Alabdulkarem et al [22], Wang et al [23], Hatcher et al [24], and Mortazavi et al [25] applied optimization to propane precooled mixed refrigerant processes to attain minimum energy consumption. Hwang et al [26] performed optimization for a dual mixed refrigerant process to minimize the total required power.…”

Investigation of Non-ideal Behavior of Plate-fin Heat Exchangers in LNG Services

“…From the thermodynamic optimal process conditions, heat exchanges are designed independently given only a duty requirement and a maximum allowable pressure drop. A recent example is the optimization of the propane pre-cooled mixed-refrigerant (C3MR) process presented by Wang et al [18]. Here, all the hot streams in the main heat exchanger were combined to form a single hot composite curve which exchanged heat with the cold stream, specifying 2 K in the Minimum Internal Temperature Approach (MITA) as a constraint for the optimization.…”

Refrigeration cycles in low-temperature distillation processes for the purification of natural gas

“…When applying the ternary mixture of nitrogen þ methane þ ethane reported by Wang et al (2009), the pressure at 148.15 K of stream 4 is under vacuum. The composition has been changed to 10 mol% nitrogen, 80 mol% methane, 10 mol% ethane and 5 mol% nitrogen, 90 mol% methane and 5 mol% ethane, in order to reduce the effect due to the presence of ethane, avoiding the formation of a liquid phase at the inlet of the expander and to operate in the region close to the one corresponding to the optimal value for the COP obtained when using a nitrogen þ methane mixture.…”

“…The composition of the ternary mixture is the one of the mixed refrigerant used in the propane pre-cooled mixed refrigerant (C3MR) process for natural gas liquefaction (Wang et al, 2009) and it is made by 8 mol% nitrogen, 46 mol% methane and 46 mol% ethane.…”

“…The most common application of refrigeration cycle for natural gas liquefaction is the Phillips optimized cascade LNG process, which consists of a three-loop cascade system that employs three pure refrigerants (typically propane, ethane or ethylene and methane) with different boiling temperatures in each loop. Also, mixed refrigerant can be used for low-temperature applications: mixtures of nitrogen and light hydrocarbons have been studied, for instance, for olefin separation (Mafi et al, 2009) and in several processes for LNG production (Wang et al, 2009). …”