Can process intensification of liquefaction technology for LNG and LH2 accelerate adoption for transportation use?

One of the reasons gaseous fuels, methane, and hydrogen, are renewable and sustainable replacements for traditional liquid hydrocarbon-based transportation fuels is their small carbon footprint. Global awareness of the immediate need to address impacts of emissions from transportation energy use has emphasized urgency of changes from business as usual. However, the transition from existing fuels to new fuels is complex because fuel usage is huge, and so many variables influence the rate of adoption. When one reads excellent energy outlooks of major energy companies, data driven reports of international and national energy agencies, along with thoughtful studies of the water, energy, food nexus, the systemic complexities are daunting. Marchetti’s insightful numerical modeling of the rate of transition among different energy sources over the past two centuries with credible validation from recorded usage data shows the time scale for appreciable changes among energy systems is several decades. A further important observation of Marchetti’s work is that transitions among energy sources were and are driven by substitution of superior technology rather than by depletion of prevalent sources. These observations incentivize developments of more efficient, less expensive, robust, scalable methods of production, liquefaction, storage, transport, delivery, and dispensing of hydrogen and natural gas to accelerate adoption by transportation customers. This paper presents a few examples of process intensification in advanced liquefiers for LNG and LH₂ at the same location could reduce capital costs, energy costs, and footprints of different sized liquefiers. These combinations could help address gaps in existing technology for several essential needs such as liquefiers for heavy-duty vehicle refueling stations or marine vessel bunkering systems, or refrigerators for storage tank boil-off management systems. Modular, containerized liquefiers plants with several tonne/day capacity could be scaled by interconnecting multiple units to make small industrial plants that match localized fuel demands from distributed mobile users.