The invention relates to a system, method and apparatus for processing natural gas in an LNG facility. A natural gas feed is introduced into a heavies removal unit. The heavies removal system includes a heavies removal column and a distillation column. The heavies removal column and the distillation column are connected via a purge/recovery line. One or more components of the natural gas feed is purged from the heavies removal column to the distillation column via the purge/recovery line to obtain a specified concentration or concentration range of heavy components feeding into the distillation column.

The present invention relates to a method for cooling down a liquefaction system for liquefying a hydrocarbon-containing gas stream. The method for cooling down the liquefaction system comprises: a) performing a pre-cool-down procedure to cool down the pre-cooling stage, b) performing a cryogenic cool-down procedure to cool down the main cooling stage. B) comprises forming a main cool-down stream (201) that meets a predetermined C.sub.n.sup.+specification. The main cool-down stream (201) is formed out of at least one auxiliary stream not being the pre-cooled hydrocarbon containing gas stream, and the cryogenic cool down procedure and the pre-cool down procedure are at least partially performed simultaneously.

The system is provided for generating a mixed methane gas feed stream using at least one source of biogas and an alternate source of methane gas. The system includes a biogas subsystem, a control device for the methane gas from the at least one alternate source of methane gas, and a vertically-extending gas mixing vessel. A method of controlling a methane gas mass flow rate of a mixed methane gas feed stream is also disclosed. The proposed concept is particularly well adapted for situations where an uninterrupted and relatively constant input of methane gas is required to ensure an optimum operation of, for instance, a LMG production plant.

A liquefaction system is capable of sequentially or simultaneously liquefying multiple feed streams of hydrocarbons having different normal bubble points with minimal flash. The liquefying heat exchanger has separate circuits for handling multiple feed streams. The feed stream with the lowest normal boiling point is sub-cooled sufficiently to suppress most of the flash. Feed streams with relatively high normal boiling points are cooled to substantially the same temperature, then blended with bypass streams to maintain each product near its normal bubble point. The system can also liquefy one stream at a time by using a dedicated circuit or by allocating the same feed to multiple circuits.

Methods for increasing ethane and non-freezing heavier hydrocarbons recovery in natural gas streams for the liquefaction of natural gas to form liquefied natural gas (LNG), and in particular, utilizing scrub columns to treat the natural gas feedstreams, are provided. Other independent variations of the methods are disclosed herein.

The present invention relates to a method of cooling and separating a hydrocarbon stream: (a) passing an hydrocarbon feed stream (7) through a first cooling and separation stage to provide a methane enriched vapour overhead stream (110) and a methane depleted liquid stream (10); (b) passing the methane depleted liquid stream (10) to a fractionation column (200) to obtain a bottom condensate stream (210), a top stream enriched in C1-C2 (220) and a midstream enriched in C3-C4 (230), (c) cooling the upper part of the fractionation column (201) by a condenser (206), (d) obtaining a split stream (112) from the methane enriched vapour overhead stream (110) and obtaining a cooled split stream (112) by expansion-cooling the split stream (112), (e) providing cooling duty to the top of the fractionation column (201) using the cooled split stream (112).

A variable speed liquid LNG expander (X1) and a variable speed two-phase LNG expander (X2) in line, downstream from X1. The rotational speed of both expanders can be controlled and changed independent from each other. The speed of expander X1 and expander X2 is determined in such way that the amount of liquid LNG downstream from the PHS compared to the feed gas supply is maximized and the amount of vapor and boil-off downstream of X2 is minimized.

Disclosed are a ship boil-off gas reliquefaction system and method. The boil-off gas reliquefaction system includes: a storage tank disposed in a ship and storing a liquefied gas; a compressor compressing boil-off gas generated from the liquefied gas; a reliquefaction apparatus reliquefying the compressed gas compressed in the compressor by cooling the compressed gas through heat exchange with a refrigerant circulating in a refrigerant circulation part; and a reliquefaction capacity controller controlling reliquefaction capacity of the reliquefaction apparatus, wherein, when a pressure value sensed at a vapor header through which the boil-off gas is discharged from the storage tank is lower than a preset low pressure value, the reliquefaction capacity controller reduces the reliquefaction capacity of the reliquefaction apparatus to maintain a pressure in the storage tank.

The system is provided for generating a mixed methane gas feed stream using at least one source of biogas and an alternate source of methane gas. The system includes a biogas subsystem, a control device for the methane gas from the at least one alternate source of methane gas, and a vertically-extending gas mixing vessel. A method of controlling a methane gas mass flow rate of a mixed methane gas feed stream is also disclosed. The proposed concept is particularly well adapted for situations where an uninterrupted and relatively constant input of methane gas is required to ensure an optimum operation of, for instance, a LMG production plant.

A method for determining an operating condition of a liquefied natural gas plant (2) includes preparing a training model (88) generated by machine learning using training data in which operating conditions data including a composition of a feed gas, a composition of a mixed refrigerant, and an ambient temperature and operation result data including a production efficiency of a liquefied product containing liquefied natural gas and a heavy component of the feed gas are associated together; and determining, as one new operating condition, a composition of the mixed refrigerant that optimizes a production efficiency of the liquefied natural gas predicted by the training model (88) from a latest composition of the feed gas in the liquefied natural gas plant (2) and a latest ambient temperature.