US LNG equipment maker Chart Industries has been contracted by Babcock to provide heat exchangers for its patent-pending LNG reliquefaction system that recovers excess boil-off gas onboard LNG vessels.
Boil-off gas recovery is fundamental to increasing cost efficiencies and environmental credentials of today’s LNG ship fleets.
Babcock’s ecoSMRT solution can be installed on new vessels as well as retrofitted onto older ships, and deployed on both large and small carriers as well as bunkering vessels.
Chart’s BAHX (brazed aluminum plate fin heat exchanger) characteristics are fundamental to Babcock system’s key features. The multi-stream capability enables an ecoSMRT plant to incorporate single mixed refrigerant (SMR) cooling within the BAHX, which removes the need for a separate refrigeration plant.
The turndown capability of BAHX enables ecoSMRT to operate at 30 percent to 100 percent reliquefaction capacity to match the boil-off gas system requirements.
Chart noted that there are more than 500 of its BAHXs in LNG service around the globe, from small peak-shaving plants right through to large baseload facilities.