New Trends in LNG Process Design

Presented London Meeting 19 February 1999 by B Fischer, A. Rojey & C Streicher, IFP and E Flesch, J Railard and T Burin de Roziers Gaz de France.

Following the trend of the last decade, the LNG market will continue to grow considerably by the beginning of the next millennium, due to the increase of the gas demand from traditional consumers and to the likely arrival of new buyers like China, India or Brazil.
The LNG market which is at the present time driven by major base load projects will probably integrate smaller size projects taking into account the advantages of lower absolute investments, shorter delivery time, easier customer contracts and the possibility of interesting economic returns of smaller gas fields. These units could be modular units or FPSO units.
The CII innovative liquefaction technology can significantly reduce the cost of the LNG chain for production capacities ranging from 1 to 5 MMTPA. Due to the different stakes involved in big and smaller units, Gaz de France (GDF) and Institut Français du Petrole (IFP) have developed two processes; Cu-1, a single MR process with an incorporated cascade, best suited for small to mid-scale applications and CII-2, a dual MR process, best suited for larger scale applications.
These CII processes are based on a common heat exchange line technology using brazed aluminium plate fin heat exchangers. Half a dozen suppliers throughout the world offer this technology which enjoys an excellent reputation in numerous cryogenic applications and provides very competitive cost efficiency.
The CII processes have been conceived to best fit present available plate fin heat exchanger size, compressors casings and gas turbine power capabilities in gas turbine-compressors arrangements, with the growing requirement of operators and investors to have at their disposal a process combining low specific consumption and low CAPEX.