Conocophillips Company

David B Messersmith

Anthony P Eaton

Attilio Jose Praderio

Weldon L Ransbarger

Megan Victoria Evans

Ed E Bailey

A liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility that employs a system to remove incondensable material from one or more refrigeration cycles within the facility. One or more embodiments of the present invention can be advantageously employed in an open-loop refrigeration cycle to remove at least a portion of one or more high vapor pressure components that have accumulated in the refrigerant cycle over time. In addition, several embodiments can be advantageously employed to stabilize facility operation in the event of drastic changes to the concentration of the natural gas feed stream introduced into the facility.

System for incondensable component separation in a liquefied natural gas facility

An improved apparatus and method for providing reflux to a refluxed heavies removal column of a LNG facility. The system withdraws a fraction of a predominately methane refrigerant from a methane refrigeration cycle of the LNG facility. The withdrawn methane refrigerant is then cooled in an auxiliary heat exchange system by indirect heat exchange with a refrigerant that is also used to cool the natural gas feed stream upstream of the heavies removal column. The resulting cooled predominately methane steam is then employed as reflux to the heavies removal column.

LNG system employing stacked vertical heat exchangers to provide liquid reflux stream

An improved apparatus and method for providing reflux to a refluxed heavies removal column of a LNG facility. The apparatus comprises stacked vertical core-in-kettle heat exchangers and an economizer disposed between the heat exchangers. The reflux stream originates from the methane-rich refrigerant of the methane refrigeration cycle. The liquid reflux stream generated by cooling the methane-rich stream in the vertical heat exchangers via indirect heat exchange with an upstream refrigerant.

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Houston, TX, United States of America

David B Messersmith