• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.67-72
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• 2013

The LNG liquefaction plant which have a higher value-added business in the LNG value chain takes about 35% of total cost. Liquefaction process is core technology of liquefaction plant. Almost all of cost which was consumed from the liquefaction plant, using for operation energy of liquefaction process. The cost can be reduced by increasing efficiency of liquefaction cycle. C3MR(propane pre-cooled, mixed refrigerant cycle) which liquefies NG using propane and MR cycle has the high efficiency, so C3MR is mostly used liquefaction process in LNG industry. In this study, process simulation and analysis were performed for C3MR process. C3MR process variables were found through this simulation and analysis, and then the process optimization was performed. It is considered that the results of process analysis, process variables and process optimization study can be utilized to develope new liquefaction process.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.38-43
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• 2011

Natural gas liquefaction process runs under cryogenic condition, and it spends large amount of energy. Minimizing energy consumption of natural gas liquefaction process is an important issue because of its physical characteristics. Among many kinds of natural gas liquefaction processes, C3-MR(Propane Pre-cooled Mixed Refrigerant) process uses two kind of refrigerants. One is the propane as the pure refrigerant(PR) and the other is the mixed refrigerant(MR). In this study, to find the optimal compressing level, propane cycle is simulated on different pressure level. The case study result shows relationship between energy consumption and pressure level. As a result, the conclusion is that at a higher pressure level, process consumes lower energy. At 5 pressure-levels, energy consumption is 23.7% lower than 3 pressure-levels.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.99-104
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• 2015

Today the most efficient way to transport the natural gas is carried via the liquid. In order to liquefy the natural gas to be cooled to $-160^{\circ}C$ or less. Cooling method has a number of different ways. In this paper, we studied control method for the representative liquefaction process, C3MR. Natural gas liquefaction control is a tool that can maintain the quality of natural gas is a means to ensure stable operation. Analyzing the C3MR process, and select the control parameters for the control valve. We find control structure for mixed refrigerant cycle through the step response. A control result obtained through the dynamic simulation arbitrarily given a disturbance was found to maintain a steady-state results.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.153-163
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• 2020

Compared to gaeous hydrogen, liquid hydrogen has approximately 1/800 volume, 800 times higher volumetric energy density at the same pressure, and the advantage of lower explosion risk and easier transportation than gaseous hydrogen. However, hydrogen liquefaction requires larger scale facility investment than simple compression storage method. Therefore, the research on energy-saving hydrogen liquefaction processes is highly necessary. In this study, helium/neon (mole ratio 80 : 20) refrigeration cycle was investigated as the main refrigeration process for hydrogen liquefaction. Process simulation for less energy consumption were carried out using PRO/II with PROVISION V10.2 of AVEVA. For hydrogen liquefaction, energy consumption was compared in three cases: Using a helium/neon refrigerant cycle, a SMR+helium/neon refrigerant cycle, and a C3-MR+helium/neon refrigerant cycle. As a result, the total power consumptions of compressors required to liquefy 1 kg of hydrogen are 16.3, 7.03 and 6.64 kWh, respectively. Therefore, it can be deduced that energy usage is greatly reduced in the hydrogen liquefaction process when the pre-cooling is performed using the SMR process or the C3MR process, which have already been commercialized, rather than using only the helium/neon refrigeration cycle for the hydrogen liquefaction process.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.27-32
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• 2013

Natural gas liquefaction process which is operated under cryogenic condition spends large amount of energy. Most of energy in the natural gas liquefaction process is consumed by compressors. Therefore, minimizing energy consumption of compressors is an important issue in process design and operation. Among various natural gas liquefaction processes, propane pre-cooled mixed refrigerant (C3MR) process consists of mixed refrigerant system and pure refrigerant system. In this study, to find the optimal design of pure refrigerant system, pure refrigerant cycle is simulated on different number of pressure levels and the necessary energy of each design is compared. After that, the driver selection model is applied to analyse each processes, which has different number of equipments, in terms of cost. As the result, the design using many equipments spends lower energy. Using this result, this study suggests standard of process design selection by the cost term.

• Clean Technology
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.314-320
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• 2014

The purpose of this work is to optimize composition of mixture refrigerants used in the C3MR (Propane & Mixed Refrigerants) process by a statistical optimization technique. C3MR studied in this work is one of widely used commercial natural gas liquefaction processes with high efficiency. Process simulation was performed in a commercial process simulator and methane ($C_1$), ethane ($C_2$), propane ($C_3$), and nitrogen ($N_2$) were selected as mixed refrigerants. Using the process model, optimum composition of refrigerants mixture was determined via mixture design and central composite design to produce minimum energy consumption. As a result, it was confirmed that energy consumption is reduced down to 11.3% comparing to existing design. It was also compared with heat effectiveness through temperature profile of MCHE (main cryogenic heat exchanger).

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.598-625
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• 2014

To support the procedure for determining an optimal liquefaction cycle for FLNG FEED, an ontological modeling method which can automatically generate various alternative liquefaction cycles were carried out in this paper. General rules in combining equipment are extracted from existing onshore liquefaction cycles like C3MR and DMR cycle. A generic relational model which represents whole relations of the plant elements has all these rules, and it is expressed by using the system entity structure (SES), an ontological framework that hierarchically represents the elements of a system and their relationships. By using a process called pruning which reduces the SES to a candidate, various alternative relational models of the liquefaction cycles can be automatically generated. These alternatives were provided by XML-based formats, and they can be used for choosing an optimal liquefaction cycle on the basis of the assessments such as process simulation and reliability analysis.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.95-105
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• 2018

An FLNG (floating liquefied natural gas) or LNG FPSO (floating production, storage and offloading) unit is a notable offshore unit with the increasing demand for LNG. The liquefaction process on an FLNG unit is the most important process because it determines the economic feasibility, but would be a hazard source because of the large quantity of hydrocarbons. While a high efficiency process such as C3MR has been preferred for onshore liquefaction processes, a relatively simple process such as the SMR (single mixed refrigerant) or DMR (dual mixed refrigerant) liquefaction process has been selected for offshore units because they require a more compact size, lighter weight, and higher safety due to their space limitation for facilities and long distance from shore. It is known that an SMR has the advantages of a simple configuration, small footprint, and lower risk. However, with an increased production rate, the inherent safety of SMR needs to be evaluated because of its small train capacity. In this study, the potential explosion risks of the SMR and DMR liquefaction processes were evaluated at the conceptual design stage. The results showed that an SMR has a lower overpressure than a DMR at the same frequency, only with a small production capacity of 0.9 MTPA. With increased capacity, the overpressure of the SMR was higher than that of the DMR. The increased number of trains increased the frequency in spite of the small amount of equipment per train. This showed that the inherent risk of an SMR is not always lower than that of a DMR, and an additional risk management strategy is recommended when an SMR is selected as the concept for an FLNG liquefaction process compared to the DMR liquefaction process.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.51-57
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• 2019

A plant layout problem has a large impact on the overall construction cost of a plant. When determining a plant layout, various constraints associating with safety, environment, sufficient maintenance area, passages for workers, etc have to be considered together. In general plant layout problems, the main goal is to minimize the length of piping connecting equipments as satisfying various constraints. Since the process may suffer from the heat and friction loss, the piping length between equipments should be shorter. This problem can be represented by the mathematical formulation and the optimal solutions can be investigated by an optimization solver. General researches have overlooked many constraints such as maintenance spaces and safety distances between equipments. And, previous researches have tested benchmark processes. What the lack of general researches is that there is no realistic comparison. In this study, the plant layout of a real industrial C3MR (Propane precooling Mixed Refrigerant) process is studied. A MILP (Mixed Integer Linear Programming) including various constraints is developed. To avoid the violation of constraints, penalty functions are introduced. However, conventional optimization solvers handling the derivatives of an objective functions can not solve this problem due to the complexities of equations. Therefore, the PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization), which investigate an optimal solutions without differential equations, is selected to solve this problem. The results show that a proposed method contributes to saving the capital expenditures.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.7-12
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• 2016

Natural gas liquefaction process is essential to transport natural gas for long distances. Lots of compressors in this process are needed and the energy for these compressors can be supplied by drivers. Total driver cost can be changed by selecting various drivers. This study focused on the minimization of the driver cost to provide the energy to the compressors. Moreover, scenarios, extracting velocity is changed during whole operating period, are set with considering gas well capacity. The mathematical model was established by considering trade off relationship between the capital cost and the operating cost of the turbines. The model also considers the life time of the driver equipments. As the result, the driver cost of the optimized case was reduced by 6.4% than the base case.