Ambient Air Vaporizer.

(AAV) is suitable in those places with warmer ambient temperatures and it is

mainly used in peak shaving plants [8, 9]. The main heat source of AAV is the energy, which is
extracted from the ambient air. The heat is absorbed directly from the surrounding air to heat the
LNG by natural convection [9]. A typical AAV design configuration consists of long parallel or in serial
fin tubes, that could allow air to exchange heat over a large area [6, 10]. Principle of vaporization
process starts when LNG is vaporized directly with air passing through a number of interconnected
tubes and then the air condenses and freezes forming frost. Looking for technical aspect, the frost is
poor conductor and its generation reduces heat transfer coefficient which indicates effectiveness of
vaporizer. Also, the AVV is commonly installed sections of vaporizers to prevent ambient air
recirculation and to increase vaporization capacity [6, 9]. The vaporization efficiency of AAV depends
on the heat transfer performance of AAV finned tube bundle, which greatly affects the stable and
effective operation of LNG gas station [11]. The vaporization of AVV depends on frost growth and the
deposition on the vaporizer wall because it causes limitation of working conditions [12]. So, some
researchers are intensively working on frost formation solving this technical problem. Open Rack
Vaporizer. (ORV) is a type of commercial heat exchanger widely used in large regasification plants for
base load Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) receiving terminals. The mechanism of vaporizer is heat
transfer tubes in which LNG flows from the bottom to the top inside the tube and other direction is
seawater flow, which starts from the top to the bottom outside the tube [13]. The water spray
equipment is installed on the top of vaporizer, which facilitates forming a uniform liquid falling film
along the tube outside the heat transfer tubes [14]. The LNG is circulated in tubes and extracted heat
transferred from seawater. The type of tubes is selected in this vaporizer with ribs, which is important
for heat transfer area. The main challenge of this vaporizer is the heat transfer characteristics of the
supercritical fluid flow inside the ribs tubes, which are different from that of a smooth tube [13]. The
improved type of vaporizer is SuperORV, which also uses the sensible heat of seawater, but has
different configuration of the heat transfer tube comparing with ORV. This new type SuperORV is
characterized by its heat transfer tubes with double tube structure at the lower part [15].
Intermediate Fluid Vaporizer. (IFV) is a shell-and-tube vaporizer, which uses an intermediate fluid and
it circulates by the gravitational force in the system. Before start work, intermediate fluid is
evaporated by a heating source in the evaporator, then it is sent to transfer heat to LNG. After LNG
heating, the intermediate fluid is cooled and condensed. A typical IFV is composed of a condenser, an
evaporator and a thermolator, similar to a combination of three shell-and-tube heat exchangers [8,
16]. The heat transfer process of intermediate fluid occurs on the shell-side in which transfer heat to
LNG inside the tube [8]. Looking for technical aspect, the intermediate fluid selection has to be
considered according these criteria: a sufficient latent heat, environmental regulations such as ozone
depletion potential (ODP) and global warming potentials (GWP) [17]. As well, the indirect heat
transfers between the seawater and LNG allow to avoid the seawater freezing and improves heat
transfer coefficient and operation reliabilit