Reprinted from The International Journal of Hydrocarbon Engineering December / January 1998 / 99

E CONOMICS OF C RYOGENIC T URBINE E XPANDERS

Gilbert Habets, Shell International Oil Products b.v. and Hans Kimmel, Ebara International Corp., analyse the economic viability of cryogenic turbine expanders for gas liquefaction processes and present a new optimisation method for specifying this equipment.

iquefied gases with very low boiling temperatures 0are called cryogenic fluids and are increasingly utilised in industrial, domestic and scientific applications. Liquid air, nitrogen, ammonia, hydrogen, oxygen and particularly liquefied natural gas (which is comprised primarily of methane), constitute the major share of cryogenic fluids, generating an important and continuously expanding part of the global economy. During the initial phases of this growing liquid gas economy, attention was focused more on solving the difficult technological problems of liquefying larger quantities of gases, rather than on reducing the liquefaction costs. This aspect has changed in recent years. Reliable liquefaction plants are now in operation around the world and, by following the rules of all open economics, the competition between liquid gas producers is increasing. This has resulted in new and additional efforts to reduce the liquefaction costs. The main directions these efforts have taken have been to increase the mass flow through the plant; to operate at higher pressures, and most recently, to replace the Joule-Thomson expansion valve with a cryogenic turbine expander. Current cryogenic turbine expanders are hydraulic turbine generators with the following two functions: electric power recovery and enthalpy reduction during the expansion process of the high pressure liquefied gas. 1 - 4 The installation of turbine expanders in liquefaction plants, particularly those for natural gas, have demonstrated a significant cost reduction and a pay back time of less than one year. These positive first results promoted further investigations concerning the engineering economics of cryogenic turbine expanders. Engineering offers many choices among alternative methods, processes, designs and specifications. These require different amounts of investment and offer different, sometimes divergent, disbursements. Engineering economics has established certain methods to answer all questions regarding the economic viability of these choices. The combination of these prevalent methods of

economics, mainly operations research and financial analysis, along with the engineering principles of thermodynamics and fluid machinery and their application to the cryogenic technology of turbine expanders, has generated a specialised part of engineering economics which offers new and unexpected results.

History
Early cryogenic expansion machines used reciprocating engines with piston, bellows or diaphragm. The first rotating expander was patented 100 years ago, in 1898, under the British Patent No. 26,767 for Edgar C. Thrupp. However, it only applied to the gaseous phase. In 1939 Peter Kapitza suggested and built a radial inflow reaction turbine for the expansion of compressed refrigerated air into the liquid phase. He operated the turbine expander successfully, but not without technical problems, and received the US Patent 2.280.585 in 1942. Peter Kapitza was also the first to publish a detailed evaluation of the technical and commercial benefits of

3 Stage liquid expander

turbine expanders in the 1939 English edition of the Russian Journal of Physics (Vol. 1, pages 7-28). This can be considered as an early beginning of the engineering economics for cryogenic turbine expanders. Several other types of turbine expanders were designed, manufactured and operated in the following decades, but the size of these expanders remained small, in the power range of less than one hundred kilowatts. The construction and operation of large liquefaction plants for natural gas began twenty years ago. This continued the trend towards larger liquefaction plants and led to the incorporation of cryogenic turbine expanders, with power outputs in the range of one Megawatt, into existing or new liquefaction plants. This was inevitably required to maintain commercial competitiveness.

Figure 1: Typical curve for turbine expander efficiency

Current Designs
Turbine expanders convert the hydraulic energy of the cryogenic fluid stream into electric energy, thus removing a certain part of the internal energy, or thermodynamic enthalpy, from the liquefied gas. This conversion of energy occurs in two stages: The hydraulic energy is transformed into mechanical shaft power, which is measured in shaft torque times rotational speed, while passing through a Francis turbine. The rotating turbine shaft drives an electrical generator which converts the mechanical shaft power into electrical power. Francis turbines, named after the developer of this turbine type, are radial inflow or mixed flow turbines which generate shaft torque by changing the angular momentum of the rotating fluid. Mixed flow turbines have partially radial and partially axial flow direction. Since the angular momentum depends on the outer radius of the turbine, radial turbines generate a larger torque than mixed flow turbines. Mixed flow turbines have a smaller outer radius than radial turbines for equal volumetric flows. All Francis turbines consist essentially of the following two parts: the non-rotating nozzle vanes, which generate the incoming angular momentum of the fluid, and the rotating turbine runner, which transforms the fluid momentum into torque. Therefore the thermodynamic expansion occurs predominantly within the runner. The present electric generators of turbine expanders are induction generators. These are either mounted on one shaft with the turbine, submerged in and cooled by the liquefied gas or they are mounted on a separate shaft coupled to the turbine shaft and cooled externally. All current designs of cryogenic turbine expanders are therefore, technically, Francis turbine generators and subject to the performance characteristics of this type of fluid machine. The conversion ratio of electric power output to hydraulic power input is called the Figure 2: Optimal performance specification efficiency of the turbine generator. This depends on the volumetric fluid flow and the pressure difference between inlet and outlet, which are the two primary turbine performance parameters. For certain parameters of volumetric flow and pressure difference, the efficiency reaches its maximum value, the best efficiency point (BEP) as shown in Figure 1. It is possible to move the BEP to a different location by adding new design parameters: the rotational speed of the turbine or the exit angle of the turbine nozzles. By changing one or both of these parameters, the BEP can be continuously shifted before or during the operation of the turbine, but not without observing small changes in the value of the BEP. This shifting of the BEP leads to another optimum value, the absolute best efficiency point (ABEP). The correct understanding of turbine efficiency is as a multivariable function of several performance parameters. These are: volumetric flow, differential head; rotational speed and nozzle exit angle. Out of these four parameters only three are truly independent and any one of them may be expressed through the remaining three by applying the law of conservation of energy. Some Francis turbines have additional

parameters, like variable vane angles in the turbine runner or variable cross sections of the nozzles, but they are not practical in the application of cryogenic turbine expanders. The most important difference between cryogenic turbine expanders and hydraulic Francis turbines is the definition of the efficiency from the viewpoint of engineering economics. For hydraulic Francis turbines, the efficiency is described as the ratio for the generated electric power available at the grid over the hydraulic energy. The efficiency of cryogenic turbine expanders is a thermodynamic efficiency and is defined as the ratio of the change in fluid enthalpy between inlet and outlet to the fluid enthalpy at the inlet. This thermodynamic efficiency is called isentropic efficiency because the ideal expansion of the liquefied gas would be isentropic. The generation of electric power with turbine expanders is a secondary benefit to the thermodynamic expansion. Nevertheless, it is important to engineering economics. The efficiency of power generation is identical to that of hydraulic Francis turbines. The correct specification of turbine expanders requires, therefore, the presentation of both efficiencies: isentropic and power generation efficiency.

The problem of the ABEP location is not a technical but an economic one and can be solved with the following method of operations research.5 The solid line graph in Figure 1 shows a typical curve for the turbine expander efficiency. The isentropic efficiency is a function of several performance parameters p n , as already described in detail. = f (p 1 , p 2 ,...p x ,...p n ) By selecting one variable parameter p x and keeping all other parameters constant, the efficiency curve reaches the optimum (BEP) for the selected parameter. The actual curve and the location of the BEP is unknown, but it is ascertained that an optimum exists within a defined range of the parameter. The location of the BEP in relation to any selected parameter p x is determined by setting the partial derivative equal to zero. p x = 0 The simultaneous solution of this set of equations for all independent parameters p x ( x = 1,2...n ) defines the location and condition for the ABEP. The conventional method to analyses unknown functions is to expand a generally presumed function into a Taylor polynomial of a certain degree. A Taylor polynomial of the second degree offers an acceptable quadratic approximation, particularly if it is expanded at the optimum. The dotted curve in Figure 1 demonstrates a quadratic Taylor polynomial which is expanded at the BEP for one selected parameter. Because of the above described condition for the BEP, the first derivative of the efficiency function of the linear term of the Taylor polynomial is zero. In the case of one performance parameter p, the Taylor polynomial for the isentropic efficiency reads: = BEP + ( 2 (q) / 2 p 2 ) (p-q) 2 The BEP is located at the point p = q , and its efficiency value is BEP . Note that only the parameter p is known, like flow or differential pressure, and all other quantities, BEP , q and the second derivative are unknown. The derivative is an unknown constant and can be substituted by another symbol, the negative constant (-2C), to simplify the equation: = BEP -C (p-q) 2 The production output of liquefaction plants varies over different periods of time, for example during one year and therefore the primary parameters for the turbine expanders flow and differential pressure, vary accordingly. In the following case it is assumed that only one parameter p changes over the observed time period, and that its different values read: p = p y during the time ratio t y

Specification
The output of gas liquefaction plants varies within a certain time period and depends on sales demand feed gas mixture and factors such as ambient temperature and cooling water temperature. It is desirable to operate the turbine expander for all these different mass flows at the BEP to achieve maximum economic benefits. As indicated in the previous section, this can be accomplished by using the described method to shift the BEP. This shifting method has it limitation, as it is not possible to change the ABEP. The ABEP has a fixed location for a specific design of an expander or a turbine. Since the isentropic efficiency of a turbine expander is a multivariable function of a series of performance parameters, the location of the ABEP can be determined, if the efficiency function is known through the common methods of calculus. In general, this is the case for existing turbine expanders after performance testing has been completed. Therefore this method can be practically applied to verify the performance prediction of the manufacturer. The inverse problem is to specify the best location of the ABEP during the project engineering stage, in order to receive the maximum economic benefits for the turbine expander during a specific time period. This is a more difficult problem because the multivariable efficiency function is unknown during the project engineering phase, and the selection of the ABEP must be valid for different expander designs and manufacturers.

The time ratio is defined as the actual time of operation at a certain p y over the total time period of all parameters p y . Therefore the total sum of all time ratios t y is equal to unity 1. During the time t y the turbine expander is operating with an isentropic efficiency of y : y = BEP -C (p y - q) 2 The problem is to find the correct BEP location q for which the sum of all efficiency values is at optimum over the total period of time. The condition for the optimum is the following equation, in which the summation is carried out over all y values: / q { t y [ BEP -C (p y -q) 2 ] } = 0 Because BEP and C are constants greater than zero, this condition can be simplified to: t y (p y -q) = 0 With reference to the definition of the time ratio, the following condition is concluded: ty = 1 and the solution of the optimisation problem is: q = typy The meaning of this solution is that for different values of a particular operation parameter, and within a certain period of time, the optimal location of the BEP , in terms of this parameter, is defined as the sum of all time ratio weighted values of the parameter.

The presented method of optimal performance specification for cryogenic turbine expanders, suggests the maximum enthalpy reduction for the liquefied gas under the consideration of time related changes in the output and operation of the liquefaction plant. The economic benefits of turbine expanders are directly proportional to the enthalpy reduction and isentropic efficiency as previously described. Therefore the maximum enthalpy reduction also offers the maximum economic benefits.

Algorithm
The above described optimisation method applies corresponding to x different multivariable performance parameters p x . The quadratic Taylor polynomial (summation over all x ) is again expanded at the optimum, which is for the multivariable efficiency function the ABEP and reads: = ABEP - C x (p x -q x ) 2 All constants C x depend on the design of the expander and are unknown during the planning phase of the process plant. The quadratic Taylor polynomial approximates the efficiency function with a multidimensional normalised paraboloid with quadratic terms only. All mixed terms of the polynomial are negligible and may be disregarded. The location of the optimised ABEP , which is also the specified rated point, has the coordinates p x = q x for all parameters p x . The above described optimisation procedure applies also to the optimum calculation of the sum of all efficiency values over the total period of time (summation over all y), leading to the following system of x equations as the multidimensional solution: q x = t xy p xy The subscript x describes the different parameters of the expander, whereas the subscript y describes the various operation points of the expander during the selected time period. The interpretation of the algorithm is that for different values of multiple operation parameters, and within a certain period of time, the optimal location of the rated point is defined as the individually calculated sum of all time ratio weighted values of each of these parameters. The presented method for optimised specification of the rated point is also, in the case of multiple performance parameters, applicable to any design of turbine expanders. It is not necessary to select a specific expander design to determine the optimised rated point, which is also the Absolute Best Efficiency Point.

Economics
The solution for the optimum location of the BEP has been developed for an undefined expander. The formula offers a very practical algorithm to specify the optimal rated point for cryogenic turbine expanders, independent of their particular designs. Figure 2 illustrates the method for optimal performance specification. The dotted curve shows the conventional specification for the rated point, where the operation point with the highest time ratio is identical to the rated point and to the best efficiency point. All otheroperational points are of the BEP on the declining part of the efficiency curve. The solid line curve demonstrates the optimised performance specification. The optimised BEP is now between all operation points and, in general, none of the operation points are directly located at the BEP . Therefore, for optimal performance specification, the rated point is still identical to the best efficiency point, but not to the operation point with the highest time ratio. The distribution of all operation points are such that the summation of all the products of the isentropic efficiency, multiplied by the operation time for each operational case during a certain period of time, will be a maximum value.

Example
To demonstrate the practical use of the described algorithm, the following examples are introduced. Two

different designs of cryogenic turbine expanders are currently in use: the variable geometry expander and the variable speed expander. The variable geometry expander has three performance parameters: volumetric flow p 1 = Q, differential head p 2 = H and nozzle exit angle. As described previously, the energy equation reduces the number of parameters by one, and the nozzle exit angle can be eliminated. The variable speed expander has also three parameters: volumetric flow Q, differential head H and rotational speed. The rotational speed can be eliminated with the energy equation by expressing the speed through H and Q. The remaining parameters and time ratios are in both cases: p 1y = Q y and p 2y = H y t 1y and t 2y The subscript y indicates the n different operation points and time ratios. The specification of the optimised rated point ABEP with its coordinates q 1 = Q ABEP and q 2 = H ABEP reads: q 1 = t 11 Q 1 + t 12 Q 2 +...+ t 1n Q n q 2 = t 21 H 1 + t 22 H 2 +...+ t 2n H n The specification of the rated point is identical for both expander designs.

By calculating some numerical examples it can be shown that the overall gain in isentropic efficiency is in the range of one percent. This gain appears to be small but it is achieved through an algorithm only and without any further capital investment.

Improvement
The specific power consumption C s of liquefaction plants is generally considered for comparison purpose of different liquefaction processes, and is defined as the ratio of the required refrigeration compressor power over the mass output of liquefied gas.4 As it is possible to cancel the time dimension in the numerator and denominator, the specific power consumption is equal to the specific energy consumption and both are expressed in kJ energy E per kg mass M. The global trend to reduce the liquefaction costs can be seen in the value of the specific power of energy consumption of natural gas plants. Liquefaction plants built 25 years ago operate with a power consumption of between 2100 and 1500 kJ/kg and recent plants consume approximately 1000 kJ/kg. The subject of the remaining portion of this paper is to analyse the effect of turbine expanders on the specific energy consumption by using engineering economics methodology. Unlike common cost reducing equipment, cryogenic turbine expanders offer a unique characteristic of double economic benefits. The power of energy

LNG test facility for liquid gas expander

Liquid gas expander prepared for testing

Liquid gas expander test installation (LNG expander)

recovery E gained through the use of turbine expanders decreases the required energy consumption, and the extraction of energy from the condensed fluid stream increases the mass output of liquefied gas. This increase in liquid mass output M is a direct result of the enthalpy reduction of the liquefied gas, while reducing the boil-off gas. If the specific energy consumption of a plant without liquid gas expanders is calculated as: CS = E M then the specific energy consumption of a plant operating with cryogenic turbine expander reads: C SE = (E - E) (M + M) The ratio C SE over C S indicates the specific energy improvement ( of the plant with expander.

approach for economic analysis. This is because the costs for the power consumption are very low compared to the price for the liquefied gas. In those instances, the specific power consumption C s is not applicable, and the correct procedure is to consider only the increase in the mass output m of liquefied gas. m = M / time ( in kg per second ) The additional mass output m is calculated in the same manner as described above. m = x m x H x g / Cp If the price for energy is X Dollars per kJ, and the price for liquefied gas is Y Dollars per kg, then the additional revenues Z offered by the installation of a liquid gas expander are (in Dollars per second). Z = x m x H x g x (X+Y/C p ) The formula for additional mass output m and revenues Z are applicable to new as well as existing liquefaction plants. The following numerical example, calculated with specific values for typical natural gas liquefaction plants of recent designs, demonstrates clearly the exceptional economical benefits of cryogenic turbine expanders. Given values: C s = 1000 kJ/kg = 10 6 J/kg C p = 511.8 kJ/kg = 511800 J/kg Q = 0.300 m 3 /s H = 1000 m = 470 kg/m 3 = 0.82 g = 9.81 m/s 2 X = 1.388 x US$ 10 .8 / J or US$ 0.05 / kWh Y = 3.517 x US$ 10 .7 / J or US$ 0.18 / kg LNG Calculated economic values: m = 2.22 kg/s or 192 t/day in additional LNG m /m = 0.0157 or 1.57% increase in LNG output = 0.976 or 2.4% reduction in specific power consumption Z = US$ 35 826 / day or US$ 13 million per year in additional revenues The example illustrates that the additional annual revenues of 13 million exceed several times the total investment for the expander of less than US$ 2 million.

= (1 E / E) (1+ M / M)
Since E and M are small compared to E and M, the ratio can be written in a binomial expansion, neglecting all second and higher order terms.

= 1 - E / E M / M
This formula illustrates the described economic double benefit of cryogenic turbine expanders. The reduction of boil-off gas M depends on the isentropically extracted energy E over the specific heat of vaporisation Cp : M = E / Cp The extracted energy E depends on the isentropic efficiency of the expander and the available hydraulic energy as the product mass M, multiplied with the differential head H (in metres) and gravity g (in metres per second squared): E = x M x H x g Since the isentropic efficiency and the efficiency for power generation are approximately equal, a simplified relation for is derived by substituting the above expressions into the improvement formula: = 1- x H x g x (C s + C p ) (C s x C p ) The reduction or improvement of the specific power and energy consumption is proportional to the isentropic efficiency and the differential head H , between inlet and outlet of the turbine expander. The relative improvement is also larger if the original energy consumption C s is smaller, implying that new liquefaction plants are economically more effected by the installation of turbine expanders than older ones. The actual cost savings are independent of the specific power consumption, and are calculated by the following method. In some cases, the installation of turbine expanders into existing liquefaction plants requires a different

Conclusion
The unique characteristic of double economic benefits as earlier described, reflects again in the

calculation of the revenues and identifies the technology of cryogenic turbine expanders as crucial for any competitive gas liquefaction process. Revenues depend directly on the sentropic efficiency . Therefore, the application of the presented specification method of optimal efficiency suggests a significant advancement for the engineering economics of cryogenic turbine expanders.

References
1. JOHNSON, L.L. and RENAUDIN, G., Liquid Turbines Improve LNG Operations, Oil and Gas Journal, 18 Nov 1996. 2. KIMMEL, H.E., Variable Speed Controlled Turbine Expanders, Hydrocarbon Engineering, May / June 1997. 3. HAESLOOP, B. and KIMMEL, H.E., Improved Cryogenic Gas Processing Efficiency due to Advancements in Liquid Turbine Expanders, AIChE Spring National Meeting, New Orleans, March 1998. 4. KIKKAWA, Y. and NAKAMURA, M. New Liquefaction Process of Natural Gas,AIChE Spring National Meeting, New Orleans, March1998. 5. BONSON, R. and NAADIMUTHU, G., Operations Research, McGraw Hill, New York 1997.