Economic Analysis of Upfront Nitrogen Removal from LNG Plant

The global demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG) is expected to continue increasing over the next decays. Qatar, as one of the largest LNG exporters with a 22% global share, announced in 2020 a plan to increase the production capacity by more than 60% over the next five years. This work aims to evaluate the economics of upfront nitrogen removal (UN
rem
) that should save energy, improve efficiency, increase production, and boost economic feasibility. This novel idea of UN
rem
was investigated through a detailed economic analysis of several UN
rem
cases. Results showed that the total power requirement and the production rate could be decreased upon the implementation of the UN
rem
concept. Compared with baseline operation, removing up to 87.5% of nitrogen from the feed was found optimal as it decreases the total power requirement by 0.24 MW and increases the LNG product flow rate by 4.4 %, while exergy loss decreased by 7.08 MW. The UN
rem
of 87.5% scenarios showed a profit of 24.2 billion USD in 20 years. Results confirmed the importance of the UN
rem
process for energy savings, process improvement, and profit without the need for structural changes.