Liquefied natural gas

Development overview edited broadcast

cause

In 1941, the world's first industrial-scale LNG plant was built in Cleveland, with a liquefaction capacity of 8,500m3 /d. Since the 1960s, the LNG industry has developed rapidly, the scale is getting larger and larger, and the basic load-type liquefaction capacity is 2.5×104m3/d. More than 160 LNG plants have been put into operation in various countries, and the total export of LNG has exceeded 46.18×106t/a.

The main component of natural gas is methane, and the atmospheric boiling point of methane is -161℃, the critical temperature is -84℃, and the critical pressure is 4.1MPa. LNG is short for liquefied natural gas, it is natural gas after purification (dehydration, dehydrocarbon, deacidic gas), the use of throttling, expansion and external cold source refrigeration process to make methane into a liquid and formed.

China's development

The development of China's natural gas trade not only reflects the change of the world natural gas market pattern, but also injects new vitality into the world natural gas market.

In 2011, China's natural gas production exceeded 100 billion cubic meters for the first time, reaching 101.18 billion cubic meters, a year-on-year increase of 6.4 percent. In the first eight months of 2012, the cumulative output reached 6.977 million tons, an increase of 5.4%. Natural gas pipeline construction is also in full swing. In 2011, China added more than 5,000 kilometers of long-distance natural gas pipelines, and the total length of dry and feeder natural gas pipelines exceeded 50,000 kilometers. On October 16, 2013, the three-tier West-East gas transmission project was started simultaneously in Beijing, Xinjiang and Fujian. Along the route, it passes through 10 provinces and regions, with a total length of 7,378 kilometers and a designed annual gas transmission capacity of 30 billion cubic meters .

Liquefied natural gas with the increasing import of liquefied natural gas at sea and the construction of liquefied natural gas liquefaction plants on land, domestic resource supply has been guaranteed. In 2011, China imported 12.215 million tons (17.1 billion cubic meters) of liquefied natural gas, about 1.3 times that of the previous year. China's offshore LNG imports will increase year by year in the future and are expected to reach 40 million tons in 2015, with a compound annual growth rate of more than 30% .

Today, China's three primary energy sources are oil, natural gas and coal. And natural gas can be second in the world. In recent years, due to the oil crisis in China, the domestic oil-producing areas have suffered serious losses. At the same time, the large-scale use of nature has caused serious pollution to the environment. This has led to the emergence of liquefied natural gas, a fuel-type fuel that is both environmentally friendly and clean. Today, in the international energy consumption market, natural gas energy consumption can account for 28% of the total consumption, but in China it only accounts for 2.8%, which is one of the reasons that lead to China's derailment from the world market.

China's current natural gas transport equipment is also relatively complicated, the installation of liquefied natural gas equipment is generally a vacuum insulated small tank, the inside volume is relatively small. And the delivery process is relatively slow and inefficient. Transport vehicles generally choose liquefied natural gas tank trucks, most of the models are semi-hung. However, with the improvement of science and technology, railway transportation will also be chosen in the transportation process, which will be widely used. In the face of the problem of natural gas installations in China, regional differentiation is also adopted, such as the installation in remote areas is generally smaller, while the installation in Shanghai Pudong is more inclined to liquefaction, and for the Central Plains, the load type is chosen. China is still a developing country, and is a large population of developing countries, the current economy is also in the process of slow development, which leads to China's demand for energy greatly increased, and China has been to oil as the main development of energy, but the current world oil development situation, oil prices are falling lower and lower, China has been unable to make ends meet in this respect. Demand for natural gas is growing in China's heavy industries, and much of the country uses the fuel-efficient fuel. With the growth of people's living standards, China's natural gas market also has a good opportunity to develop .

In 2021, China overtook Japan to become the world's largest importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG). 

In May 2023, 51,000 tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplied by petrochina International Corporation was successfully unloaded at the Hong Kong LNG receiving terminal. 

On September 21, 2023, the world's largest floating storage regasification unit ship "Bauhinia Spirit" was put into operation in Hong Kong, marking the official operation of Hong Kong's offshore liquefied natural gas terminal.