Advanced exergetic analysis of five natural gas liquefaction processes

• Advanced exergetic analysis was investigated for five LNG processes.
• Avoidable/unavoidable and endogenous/exogenous irreversibilities were calculated.
• Advanced exergetic analysis identifies the potentials for improving the system.

Conventional exergy analysis cannot identify portion of inefficiencies which can be avoided. Also this analysis does not have ability to calculate a portion of exergy destruction which has been produced through performance of a component alone. In this study advanced exergetic analysis was performed for five mixed refrigerant LNG processes and four parts of irreversibility (avoidable/unavoidable) and (endogenous/exogenous) were calculated for the components with high inefficiencies. The results showed that portion of endogenous exergy destruction in the components is higher than the exogenous one. In fact interactions among the components do not affect the inefficiencies significantly. Also this analysis showed that structural optimization cannot be useful to decrease the overall process irreversibilities. In compressors high portion of the exergy destruction is related to the avoidable one, thus they have high potential to improve. But in multi stream heat exchangers and air coolers, unavoidable inefficiencies were higher than the other parts. Advanced exergetic analysis can identify the potentials and strategies to improve thermodynamic performance of energy intensive processes.