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Research Integrated Research on Energy, Environment and Society | IREES Research

Potential and improvement of LNG liquefaction facility and distribution infrastructure | Jinrui Zhang

Jinrui Zhang
Jinrui Zhang

Field | Discipline

Expertise

Summary

With the population growing and economies developing, the power consumption has grown rapidly. To meet this growth, the consumption of gas is expected to grow to a quarter of global energy demand. The gas demand has a dynamic fluctuation in seasonal, while using at residential and commercial. It depends on temperature. To meet this fluctuation, the gas supplies should be flexible. Then there comes liquefied natural gas (LNG). Compare to pipeline, LNG is more flexible while transporting. It can transport in cryogenic tankers by roads, ships and rail ways. While the pipeline have several drawbacks, including that it cannot cross the sea; it is very specific, only from one supplier to one consumer and the supply capacity is affected on the pipeline pressure differential. These drawbacks are the advantage of LNG trade. And the cost of all parts of LNG chain has reduced tremendously. Further with the decrease of indigenous production, consider that the undeveloped gas fields are often located far away from gas market, LNG will play a key role in the increased energy demand and will be on the future sustainable energy mix.

The aim of the project is to study technical, economic, and environmental related to LNG liquefaction facility and distribution infrastructure. The first part of the project is the overview of LNG industry, to investigate the prospective of LNG. It focus in two parts: the LNG as a complement to renewables analysis and the LNG compare to pipeline analysis. The second part is the LNG facility including the liquefaction systems in large scale and small scale. In this part, the modeling methods apply in aspects of efficiency and emission, and also in aspect of economics and optimization. The third part focus on LNG infrastructure, including regasification terminal and cold energy utilization. The distribution of LNG is the main focus in this part. Life cycle analysis for each distribution will be done to figure out prospective of the utilization of LNG.

trade as share of global consumption and imports as share of consumption.
trade as share of global consumption and imports as share of consumption.


Supervision by

  • Promotor Prof. dr. A.P.C. (André) Faaij | Integrated Research on Energy, Environment and Society - IREES | ESRIG, University of Groningen.
  • Co-promotor Dr. R.M.J. (René) Benders | Integrated Research on Energy, Environment and Society - IREES | ESRIG, University of Groningen.
  • Co-promotor Dr. J.C (Hans) Meerman | Integrated Research on Energy, Environment and Society - IREES | ESRIG, University of Groningen.
Last modified:27 February 2024 12.21 p.m.