LNG

Linde Engineering, the German energy equipment supplier including for LNG, said its Linde Kryotechnik subsidiary had signed a contract to supply the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, with two identical helium cryogenic refrigeration systems.

The Pullach, Germany-based company has already supplied systems providing more than 50 percent of the refrigeration capacity required for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The LHC is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built, allowing physicists to test the predictions of different theories of particle physics.

The accelerator sits in a tunnel 100 metres underground at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

“CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is the largest cryogenic system in the world,” explained Lars Blum, Managing Director of Linde Kryotechnik.

“We have been delivering sophisticated refrigeration systems to CERN since 1986. To be selected for the most significant upgrade of the LHC since its start-up in 2008 speaks to our track record in reliable and efficient solutions, even in the most complex research environments,” stated Blum.

Capacities

The Linde company explained that each refrigeration system will have a capacity of 3.25 kilowatts at 1.9 Kelvin (-271 °C), which is close to absolute zero. The plants are required for a High-Luminosity upgrade to the LHC.

The LHC collides tiny particles of matter (protons) at an energy of 13.6 TeV (Tera electron Volt) center of mass in order to study the fundamental components of matter and the forces that bind them together.

“The upgraded LHC will make it possible to study these in more detail, increasing the number of collisions by a factor of between five and seven,” the company explained.

For each of the plants, Linde will deliver a compressor system, a surface cold box measuring 14 metres in length and 3.5 meters in diameter, an underground cold box with a length of seven metres and a diameter of 2.5 metres and a vacuum-insulated piping network to connect the two cold boxes.

The surface cold box will cool the helium to 4.5 Kelvin (-269 °C), and the second cold box about 90 metres underground will provide the required 1.9 Kelvin (-271 °C).

Linde will also be responsible for installation and final commissioning. The handover to CERN is scheduled for mid-2026.

BASF Group, the German oil and gas and chemicals company, said the latest Malaysian floating LNG production hull owned by Petronas had selected BASF’s “OASE purple” process for its Acid Gas Removal Unit.

BASF, headquartered in the Rhine River city of Ludwigshafen, said the Petronas-owned vessel, the “PFLNG Dua”, is the first global user of the process.

The German company noted that Petronas successfully started up “FLNG Dua” in February 2021 and completed its performance test run in May 2021.

Petronas, the world leader in FLNG output, said in January 2021 that the “PFLNG Dua” had entered production in a joint venture with Thailand’s energy company PTTEP over the Rotan gas field offshore Sabah.

The vessel is deployed over the gas located 140 kilometres off Kota Kinabalu in Sabah state on the northern part of the island of Borneo.

The “PFLNG Dua” was constructed at the South Korean shipyard, Samsung Heavy Industries.

The first Petronas LNG hull, “PFLNG Satu”, became the world’s first FLNG vessel to start commercial operations in 2017 over the Kanowit gas field offshore Sarawak, another Malaysian state on Borneo.

Output

The “PFLNG Dua” has production capacity of 1.5 million tonnes of LNG per annum.

BASF said its “OASE purple” process is an amine-based solution that is utilized for the removal of acid gases such as carbon-dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen-sulfide (H2S) from natural gas.

The removal of acid gases is necessary to prepare the gas for the liquefaction and subsequent pipeline transportation.

“The highly efficient and environmentally friendly BASF technology provides flexibility and low capital expenditure for its customers,” said BASF.

“Additionally, the low energy demand of the process combined with the non-corrosive nature of the solvent keeps operating and maintenance costs (OPEX) low,” the German company added.

BASF explained that the process also provided a high level of gas purity and gas recovery while keeping solvent losses to a minimum.

“We are proud to now have our first FLNG reference in operation and running at 100 percent capacity, which is the fruit of many years of research,” said Andreas Northemann, Head of BASF’s Gas Treatment business.

“We applied our onshore LNG expertise and conducted motion studies and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to ensure a high reliability, low maintenance design which meets our customer’s stringent offshore specifications and challenges,” added Northemann.

Gasum, the Nordic natural gas company and LNG supplier based in Finland, said it had agreed to acquire two businesses from the German group, Linde AG, with one involved in the clean energy sector and another in LNG maritime fuel.

The Linde Group of Germany was awarded a contract by a Chinese chemical and energy company to supply a mid-scale liquefied natural gas liquefaction plant at an industrial site near Beinichuan in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of northern China.