Traditionally Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) plants have been designed for large scale export markets at thousands of tonnes per day or for peak shaving operations at hundreds of tonnes pre day. These large and medium to small scale plants are custom built with substantial capital costs and large operating teams.

However there are development markets for LNG to service the transport industry, remote power supply and other industrial applications. The volumes required to service these opportunities are relatively low compared to the output from even the small scale plants. The market therefore needed a sub 100 tonne per day plant which we call MICRO LNG.

Another use for such MICRO LNG plants is the monetising of both stranded natural gas reserves and land fill gas.

A key challenge in process plant design when scaling down is that the capital cost to output ratio increases significantly whilst production efficiency is reduced, making small scale plants less attractive. BOC’s development of the Micro LNG Plant has addressed these two challenges along with minimising the size of the operations teams required.

The approach to the design of the MICRO LNG plant has been to use refrigeration industry standard equipment starting with a standard compressor design and size. The balance of plant has been selected and where required designed around the chosen compressor size. Furthermore the plant has been designed in a modular format for easy site deployment.

A 50 tonne per day MICRO LNG plant was installed and commissioned in Tasmania 2010/11 and is currently supplying the Tasmanian trucking industry.