Proceedings of the Second International Energy 2030 Conference,
November 4-5, 2008, Abu Dhabi, UAE

High Efficiency Solar Cooling Technique

Al. Al-Alili
University of Maryland, USA

Y. Hwang
University of Maryland, USA

R. Radermacher
University of Maryland, USA

I. Kubo
The Petroleum Institute, UAE

P. Rodgers
The Petroleum Institute, UAE

Abstract
Chemical and gas plants are energy-intensive facilities so that any enhancement of their efficiency will result in abundant reduction of energy consumption and green house gas emissions. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants consume a great amount of energy. In order to enhance LNG plant energy efficiency, the potential of various options for improving liquefaction cycle efficiency is investigated in this study. After developing models for the LNG process using ASPEN software, four expansion loss recovery options are simulated. The simulation results show that the compressor power reduction, expansion work recovery, and LNG production increase can be achieved as much as 2.187 MW, 3.9 MW, and 1.24%, respectively, by replacing conventional expansion processes with expanders. Therefore, the expansion work recovery is an important option to be implemented in LNG plants.