Thermodynamic and heat transfer analysis of LNG energy recovery for power production

An important option to transport the gas is to convert it into liquid natural gas (LNG) and convey it using insulated LNG tankers. At receiving terminals, the LNG is offloaded into storage tanks and then pumped at the required pressure and vaporized for final transmission to the pipeline. The LNG production process consumes a considerable amount of energy, while the cold availability, as also known as cold energy, has been stored in LNG. At a receiving terminal, LNG needs to be evaporated into gas at environmental temperature before fed into the gas distribution system. Seawater is commonly used for the regasification process of the LNG. In the present paper, after a general analysis of the perspectives of the various thermodynamic schemes proposed for power production from the regasification, a detailed analysis of enhanced direct expansion system is carried out in order to identify the upper level of the energy that can be recovered. The analysis outlines that power production typical of optimized ORC plant configurations (120 kJ/kg) can be obtained with direct expansion solutions.