Post-combustion

The Barents Sea is one of the world’s most important fishing grounds. It is also the site of Europe’s largest natural gas liquefaction plant.

Built off the coast of Norway using Linde’s expertise, it is the first liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in the world where the carbon dioxide contained in natural gas is not only physically separated, but subsequently dehumidified, condensed and pumped back into storage.

Around 700,000 tonnes of CO2 are captured and stored in this way each year, significantly reducing the plant’s environmental impact. Most standard LNG plants currently release the gas unfiltered into the atmosphere.

The energy required for natural gas liquefaction in this plant is generated using highly efficient gas turbines, which consume around a third less fuel than traditional turbines. The hot flue gas from these steam turbines is used to warm a heat carrier, known as hot oil that then supplies the entire plant with thermal energy.

This replaces the usual gas-fired furnace, resulting in significantly lower emissions than those of other existing plants. The gas turbines used are also equipped with special burners to ensure a particularly low concentration of nitrogen oxides (NOX) in the fumes.

The Hammerfest plant was also the world’s first LNG plant to use electric motors to power its refrigeration compressors. This not only makes it easier to adapt the entire plant for varying outputs, it also keeps power loss to a minimum, which, in turn, lowers emissions.

Another global first for Hammerfest is our application of a technology that collects all gases released when loading the products onto tankships, returns them to the LNG plant and then liquefies them. In conventional plants, these same gases are burnt by torch and released into the atmosphere.