LNG

Air Products, the world’s leading supplier of liquefaction processing equipment for LNG plants around the world, has also emerged as the main global producer of hydrogen with new contracts just awarded from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration to match others from nations like oil producer Saudi Arabia.

Bechtel Inc., the dominant US liquefaction plant and energy engineering company that once constructed three export facilities in Queensland in Australia alongside each other, said it would join with researchers from two American universities to develop technologies for living and working on the Moon.

The research awards were announced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) after it selected proposals from the Colorado School of Mines and Missouri Science & Technology.

“Bechtel started as a frontier company more than 120 years ago,” said Mike Costas, general manager of Bechtel’s Defense and Space business line.

“Now, we’re thinking about the next frontier. What will it take to build permanent infrastructure on the Moon? What an exciting time,” stated Costas.

Most of the current LNG export plants being constructed or proposed along the US Gulf Coast are in the hands of Bechtel.

One of the company’s most notable feats was building the three Australian LNG export plants Queensland Curtis LNG, Gladstone LNG and Australia-Pacific LNG and bringing the six processing Trains onstream between 2014 and 2016.

Bechtel said its selected projects will receive up to $2 million over two years to develop their technologies and the company founded in San Francisco and with main offices in Houston, Texas, will serve as an industrial partner to both teams.

Autonomous construction

“Autonomous Construction - Humans living on the Moon will need structures like habitats and landing pads, which can be made more efficiently if they're constructed autonomously by robots,” explained Bechtel.

“Colorado School of Mines, led by principal investigator Christopher Dreyer, will develop tools and methods for autonomous landing pad construction on the Moon's surface,” it added.

The other award is for “Extracting Resources - Supplies for lunar astronauts” and could be created from what's already on the lunar surface, a process called in-situ resource utilization.

“Missouri S&T, led by principal investigator Leslie Gertsch, will use magnetic and electrostatic technologies to more efficiently separate calcium-containing and aluminum-containing minerals from the Moon's soil, called regolith, to extract materials suitable for construction on the lunar surface,” said Bechtel.

Bechtel said that this was the perfect opportunity to collaborate with the engineering schools.

“Tackling the challenge of building on the Moon will require the know-how of what’s already been done in Earth’s harshest environments, combined with new thinking and approaches,” said Costas.

Interstellar Technologies, a Japanese start-up company, has test fired an LNG-powered rocket at its site on Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido in a move that has captured public support for the commercial space race.

KBR, the US engineering company with a strong energy and LNG presence, has been awarded a master service agreement and feasibility study by Japanese resources company JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corp.