Development of the hybrid JT-expander cycle for NG liquefaction cycle

Abstract

Two liquefaction cycles for LNG (liquefied natural gas) production are compared in this paper. One is a well known MR (mixed refrigerant) JT cycle with two phase separators and four heat exchangers. Another one is the novel concept of hybrid cycle, which is to replace the last stage JT expansion with a turbine expander. The inlet flow to the turbine expander is deliberately warmed up by NG (natural gas) stream to guarantee superheated vapor phase and increase useful work. The turbine expander is to extract pressure exergy and reduce entropy generation by producing work and alleviating work requirement in the compressor. This paper describes the detailed processes of hybrid JT-expander cycle and the quantitative comparison results by HYSYS simulation under some realistic physical constraints. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.