Techno-Economic Assessment of LNG Re-gasification Alternatives in Pakistan

Abstract

With the passage of time, natural gas has emerged as a clean and efficient alternative to traditional fuels like coal, diesel and furnace oil. This demand requirement has fueled Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), an energy intensive product and converted to cryogenic liquid at a temperature of -162.3˚C, reducing the volume by 600 times. With domestic resource depletion and rising demand of natural gas has pushed Pakistan to import LNG. Pakistan being a new entrant to LNG market relies on costly offshore FSRU (Floating Storage and Regasification unit), without any study underlining the other LNG regasification alternative available and the likely environmental variables impacting the regasification processes. In order so, this study is focused on techno-economic evaluation R-LNG processes. For this study, the various utilities like the seawater, ambient air, waste heat integration, hybrid modules and various others. Moreover, various structural configurations like Open Rack Vaporizer (ORV), Intermediate Fluid Vaporizer (IFV) variant and submersible combustion vaporizer (SCV) are also a point of focus. Moreover, the modelling and simulations for the respective regasification Techniques employed PRSV equation of state complimented by physical heat transfer laws and equations. In all this, environmental parameter underlined the choice of onshore integrated system utilizing. Moreover, the climatic considerations and temperature impacted the process efficiency, resultantly leading to failures and environmental costs. To this, NG as a fuel demonstrated high operational efficiency unaffected by the environmental parameters. While the integrated systems along with novel IFV are phenomenal in efficiencies and little productivity losses. Lastly, the operational and capital cost underlined that IFV system along with higher efficiencies is the best alternative