Separation of a Fluid Mixture Using Self-Cooling of the Mixture

Abstract

The use of an inexpensive heat exchanger for self-cooling of a fluid mixture is disclosed. The heat exchanger is made up of a plurality of plates and each plate has at least two channels defined in the plate. A fluid mixture is cooled and expanded, and separated, generating at least two process streams. One or more of the process streams are passed back to the heat exchanger to cool the fluid mixture.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to the cooling of fluids through the self-cooling from the fluid. More particularly this invention goes to the cooling of a fluid to self-cool the fluid and to cool and separate the self-cooled fluid.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]The demands for natural gas have increased in recent years. The transport of natural gas is through pipelines or through the transportation on ships. Many areas where natural gas is located are remote in the sense that there are no convenient pipelines to readily transfer the natural gas to. Therefore natural gas is frequently transported by ship. The transport of natural gas on ships requires a means to reduce the volume and one method of reducing the volume is to liquefy the natural gas. The process of liquefaction requires cooling the gas to very low temperatures. There are several known methods of liquefying natural gas as can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 6,367,286; U.S. Pat. No. 6,564,578; U.S. ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0005]The use of a compact self-cooling heat exchanger for separating a fluid mixture is disclosed. The heat exchanger is made up of a plurality of plates and each plate has at least two channels defined in the plate. A fluid mixture is passed through a heat exchanger and cooled. The fluid mixture is expanded through a controlled expansion to provide the desired cooling load, and conditions for passing the expanded fluid mixture to a separation unit. The fluid mixture is expanded to create a two phase mixture of liquid and vapor. The two phase mixture is passed to a separation unit, where a first process stream enriched in at least one component is produced, and a second process stream enriched in at least a second component is produced. The first proces

Problems solved by technology

Many areas where natural gas is located are remote in the sense that there are no convenient pipelines to readily transfer the natural gas to.

These shell and tube heat exchangers are very large and very expensive, and present problems of economics and feasibility for remote and smaller natural gas fields.

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