Introduction A cryogenic turbine generator (Cryoturbine™) has replaced the Joule Thomson (J-T)

valve in the latest LNG liquefaction plants, increasing overall process efficiency, while generating
electricity as a bonus. The Cryodynamics Division of Ebara International Corp, Sparks, Nevada,
has developed a variable speed turbine generator that removes energy from the pressure
reduction (liquid expansion) of the LNG to operate a generator while lowering the temperature
of the LNG stream and automatically compensating for any variation in process conditions.

Expansion Cooling Concepts

The original observation of the thermodynamic effects of pressure reduction of a gas relates to
physicist Guy-Lussac. In 1806, he observed that a drop in gas temperature was not detected
when pressurized gas was allowed to expand freely. Nearly 40 years later, James Joule, an
English physicist, repeated and extended Guy-Lussac's work, in conjunction with William
Thomson. They discovered that the gas temperature will decrease when a high pressure gas is
expanded to a lower pressure, without doing work, and with no heat entering or escaping the
low pressure vessel. This is known as an adiabatic, constant enthalpy expansion and is referred
to as a Joule-Thomson expansion (i.e. reduction of liquid pressure across a flow constriction or J-
T valve). Two constraints of a J-T expansion must be noted. One is that the cooling effect of a gas
expansion when work is extracted during the process is considerably greater than the Joule
Thomson effect alone. The second constraint is that full realization of the J-T expansion cooling
cannot be achieved because no real system can be made immune to heat leakage either inwards
or outwards. There is no material that has perfect non-conducting qualities and zero heat
capacity.