Air Products to supply LNG heat exchanger for Shell Australia FLNG project
Air Products has been selected to supply its proprietary cryogenic coil-wound LNG heat exchanger for the Shell’s floating LNG (FLNG) facility, to be located in the Browse Basin off the northwest coast of Western Australia.
In May, Shell announced it had made its final investment decision to move forward with the Prelude FLNG project, the first-ever FLNG facility to be built.
Air Products had been carrying out engineering in support of the front-end engineering design effort for the Prelude project by a Technip and Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) consortium.
Shell will locate its floating LNG facility approximately 125 miles offshore, and it will be the largest floating offshore facility in the world at 533 yards long.
The establishment of FLNG plants has the potential to place gas liquefaction facilities directly over offshore gas fields, thereby precluding the need for long distance pipelines and extensive onshore infrastructure.
This innovative alternative to traditional onshore LNG plants provides a commercially attractive and environmentally sensitive approach for monetizing offshore gas fields, Air Products said.
"This is a new market segment for LNG for all of us and required some innovation, which is an Air Products' strength,” said Jim Solomon, director of LNG at Air Products. “There is a lot of interest in monetizing the stranded natural gas fields located offshore around the globe.
“In fact, we've been studying floating LNG plant design extensively for over 10 years. We have completed empirical studies on our heat exchanger equipment in sea motion induced test rigs in order to position ourselves for what could be a major trend for this industry.”
Solomon added that as a result of its development efforts, Air Products had made design changes to its proprietary LNG heat exchanger to operate safely, effectively and efficiently in a floating environment.
Air Products is under contract on the FLNG project with Technip, which is designing and constructing the FLNG facility in a consortium with SHI.
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