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Conventional natural gas (NG) liquefaction processes remove N2 near the tail of the plant, which limits production capacity and decreases energy efficiency and profit. Engineering calculations suggest that upfront N2 removal could have substantial economic benefits on large-scale liquefied natural gas (LNG) processes. This article provides an overview of the most promising technologies that can be employed for upfront N2 removal in the LNG process, focusing on the process selection and design considerations of all currently available upfront N2 removal technologies. The literature review revealed that although adsorption has proven to be a huge success in gas separation processes (efficiency ≥ 90%), most of the available adsorbents are CH4-selective at typical NG conditions. It would be more encouraging to find N2-selective adsorbents to apply in upfront N2 removal technology. Membrane gas separation has shown growing performance due to its flexible operation, small footprint, and reduced investment cost and energy consumption. However, the use of such technology as upfront N2 removal requires multi-stage membranes to reduce the nitrogen content and satisfy LNG specifications. The efficiency of such technology should be correlated with the cost of gas re-compression, product quality, and pressure. A hybrid system of adsorption/membrane processes was proposed to eliminate the disadvantages of both technologies and enhance productivity that required further investigation. Upfront N2 removal technology based on sequential high and low-pressure distillation was presented and showed interesting results. The distillation process, operated with at least 17.6% upfront N2 removal, reduced specific power requirements by 5% and increased the plant capacity by 16% in a 530 MMSCFD LNG plant. Lithium-cycle showed promising results as an upfront N2 chemical removal technology. Recent studies showed that this process could reduce the NG N2 content at ambient temperature and 80 bar from 10% to 0.5% N2, achieving the required LNG specifications. Gas hydrate could have the potential as upfront N2 removal technology if the is process modified to guarantee significant removals of low N2 concentration from a mixture of hydrocarbons. Retrofitting the proposed technologies into LNG plants, design alterations, removal limits, and cost analysis are challenges that are open for further exploration in the near future. The present review offers directions for different researchers to explore different alternatives for upfront N2 removal from NG.

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) has garnered global attention as a relatively cleaner, environmentally more friendly, and more efficient energy source than other fossil fuels. Upgrading and liquefying natural gas to LNG is highly energy-intensive, and the most energy-consuming section of a typical LNG plant is its cold section. While much existing research has focused on heat integration and efficient refrigeration cycles to reduce power use in the cold section, energy sourcing for the cold section has received limited attention. Furthermore, several processes and product/fuel quality constraints such as high heating value are not addressed adequately. In this study, we first develop a realistic, energy selfsustaining model of the cold section of a conventional LNG plant. Boil-off gas and end flash gas are hydrocarbon-rich waste streams that are used to power gas turbines that meet the plant's power needs. Then, we propose various structural changes to the conventional plant design, identifying opportunities to reduce energy requirements while increasing LNG production with the same feed flow rate. We develop the process models using a commercial simulator and deploy a simulation-based optimization paradigm to determine optimal design parameters and minimize specific power consumption (SPC) while ensuring that various process and product/fuel constraints are met. The findings reveal those structural improvements to a conventional LNG plant's cold section lower total power usage by 4.83% while increasing LNG output by 16 kt/a (0.48%). The SPC is further reduced by 5.52% due to lower total power usage and increased LNG output.

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