A TERA Based Comparison of Heavy Duty Engines and Their Artificial Design Variants for Liquified Natural Gas Service

The liquefaction of natural gas is an energy intensive process and accounts for a considerable portion of the costs in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) value chain. Within this, the selection of the driver for running the gas compressor is one of the most important decisions and indeed the plant may well be designed around the driver, so one can appreciate the importance of driver selection. This paper forms part of a series of papers focusing on the research collaboration between Shell Global Solutions and Cranfield University, looking at the equipment selection of gas turbines in LNG service. The paper is a broad summary of the LNG Technoeconomic and Environmental Risk Analysis (TERA) tool created for equipment selection and looks at all the important factors affecting selection, including thermodynamic performance simulation of the gas turbines, lifing of hot gas path components, risk analysis, emissions, maintenance scheduling, and economic aspects. Moreover, the paper looks at comparisons between heavy duty industrial frame engines and two artificial design variants representing potential engine uprates. The focus is to provide a quantitative and multidisciplinary approach to equipment selection. The paper is not aimed to produce absolute accurate results (e.g., in terms of engine life prediction or emissions), but useful and realistic trends for the comparison of different driver solutions. The process technology is simulated based on the Shell DMR technology and single isolated trains are simulated with two engines in each train. The final analysis is normalized per tonne of LNG produced to better compare the technologies.