Small to mid-scale LNG plants Linde Engineering is specialised in pre-engineered solutions tailored to individual requirements for small to mid-scale LNG plants, offering the full range of liquefaction technologies, including its most recent standardised LNG plant concept StarLNG™.

Driven by growing global natural gas reserves, favourable gas prices and stricter emission regulations, liquefied natural gas (LNG) is beginning to replace traditional oil-based fuels in marine and heavy vehicle engines, power generation and process industries. This emerging “merchant LNG” market calls for decentralised small to mid-scale LNG plants and is now growing beyond a niche market, attracting new and low-cost players.

We have been supplying individually designed LNG plants for many years. Today, those plants demonstrate the "technical"excellence of our applied LNG technology for merchant and peak-shaving LNG plants.

To deliver the same levels of quality at lower cost and in shorter time frames, we decided to increase the degree of standardisation in our LNG business. The result is our StarLNG™ plant concept.

StarLNG^™ was developed to deliver standardised, optimised small to mid-scale LNG plants featuring a wide set of process variations. This “process toolbox” is designed to cover about 90% of real-life operating conditions. It offers the following major benefits:

• Same safety levels as world-scale LNG plants

• Fast-track EPC execution schedule

• Reduced CAPEX

• Highly efficient LIMUM^® process, easy to operate

• Modularised units for pre-treatment, process and main pipe racks

• Toolbox concept with many options

The generic StarLNG^TM plant concept (base case with 200 tonnes per day (tpd) net liquefaction capacity), offers many alternatives, with pre-engineered documents including a 3D CAD-model for a fully modularised plant – combining superb safety, reliability, ease of operations and efficiency with competitive prices and shortest execution schedule. 

With some simple adjustments, however, StarLNG™ supports LNG capacity ranges between 100 and 3,000 tpd using the same pre-engineered plant design concept. For liquefaction, two proprietary designs (PFHE and CWHE) are available for the main cryogenic heat exchanger, depending on plant capacity and operational requirements.