On-site LNG production at filling stations

In the next decades fossil fuels are expected to still play a fundamental role within the energy market, contemporarily to the increased exploitation of renewable energy sources. Among all fossil fuels, natural gas is predicted to be the key source to achieve the satisfaction of the forecasted increase in energy demand, due to its lower environmental impact. In particular, great attention is being paid on the transport sector where liquefied natural gas can be seen as an interesting opportunity. In this context, this paper aims to elaborate a novel solution for liquefied natural gas production directly at filling stations. With this purpose, in this work four different liquefaction process layouts will be proposed and analyzed, considering natural gas supply grid operating at middle pressure or at low pressure. The developed configurations will be analyzed by applying an in-house developed calculation model, which enables to define the physical conditions in each section of the process and the energy fluxes of the plant. In order to define a configuration which allows to minimize the process' energy consumption, a parametric analysis has been carried out to evaluate and compare the performance of the proposed processes. With this purpose, several performance indicators have been defined and applied to the considered scenarios.