Two recent projects in the USA and Australia are cases in point.   The first involved re-purposing an iso-pentane stream, produced as a by-product of an Australian LNG facility.  Iso-pentance is typically either vented or flared.  For this plant, Jord designed and supplied iso-pentane re-vapourisation modules that allowed this gas stream to be blended into a fuel source, used to fire an adjacent Combined Cycle Power Plant.

The second project involved utilising unwanted ethane, produced from a shale deposit near to the Fairview Energy Centre in Jackson Township, Pennsylvania.  This was a flagship project for GE., who were installing two latest generation 7HA.02 gas turbines & a steam turbine to drive a 1,050 MW combined cycle power plant at an impressive 61% efficiency.  The power plant, servicing over one million homes, is using as a fuel source a blend of the nearby waste ethane and natural gas – a global industry first in this respect.

Jord’s brief here was to design and supply the ethane delivery system.   Many challenges were faced.  The ethane fluid was near that critical point where the densities of both liquid & vapour approach each other.  This makes vaporizing & separating much more difficult, especially at the relatively high working pressure of 42 bar.  A further complication was designing the modules within a very tight allowable plotspace.