Hydrogen: lost in transportation?
Transporting hydrogen will be more challenging than for any other commodity ever commercialised in the history of global energy. This 19-page note reviews the costs and complexities of cryogenic trucks,…
LNG liquefaction technologies: an overview?
…Coldness is generated in an LNG plant using the reverse Brayton cycle, as covered in our overview of cryogenics. A refrigerant is compressed. As gases are compressed, their pressure and…
How do LNG costs vary with plant size?
…more detail into cryogenics, and the inherent benefits of larger cold boxes. A small cold box (lower volume to surface area) will leak coldness faster than a larger cold box…
Shell: the future of LNG plants?
…novel LNG plant designs, based on Shell’s patents: including advanced materials, alternatives to cryogenics (which can abet small-scale LNG) and next-generation modularization. Thether these can cut capex by c70%. Pages…
Ethane cracking: the economics?
…yields of c50%. Most often the products are separated via cryogenics and distillation. We estimate that a typical US Gulf Coast facility could generate 10-15% IRRs at typical capex cost…
Small-scale CCS: transport liquid CO2?
…are helpful and are explained on pages 6-8. CO2’s unusual triple point means that the energy costs of CO2 liquefaction are around two-thirds lower than the heavy-duty cryogenics that are…
Aluminium producers: company screen?
…heat recovery at power plants or the cryogenics behind ASUs and LNG. This hinges on aluminium’s materials properties. It is 70% lighter than copper, and about 70% more economical, despite…
Energy economics: engineering wonders?
…it is helpful to understand how energy units work, how electricity works, how power grids work, how magnetism works, how metals work, how gas compression works, how cryogenics works, how…
Gas fractionation: NGL economics?
…to ‘drop out’ all of the NGL fractions in a demethanizer (chart below). (For more details, we have written an overview of cryogenics) The NGLs may then be heat exchanged…
Boltzmann energy overview?
…cryogenics, industrial gases, LNG, CCS, hydrogen. Boltzmann in chemistry and materials? The Boltzmann expression? Maths using the Boltzmann constant often feature the expression exp(-E/kB.T). Here, exp denotes the natural exponent…