Enagas Aims to Recycle Cold from LNG Terminal

Spain’s gas transmission operator Enagas has presented a project to turn the Huelva in southwest Spain into a sustainable logistics hub for the cold storage of goods, using a system already running in Japan.

The port handles large volumes of perishable Spanish agricultural produce for export around the world.

The system presented by Enagas would harness residual cold from the regasification process at its busy Huelva LNG terminal. This would be piped to cold storage facilities – in this case, a prototype ‘tunnel freezer’. Enagas said the freezer could produce temperatures of up to -36ºC, offer energy savings of more than 50%, plus a 90% reduction in its carbon footprint. Together with its partner Port of Huelva, Enagas said May 8 it presented the plan to more than 100 experts from all over Europe; the initiative to develop such a prototype was thought up by a newly created Enagas subsidiary, Enagas 4 Efficiency.

In Japan, Osaka Gas' busy Senboku LNG import terminals I and II have 'air liquefaction' units that enable chilled air to be distributed to neighbouring companies.

Recycling LNG waste cold to provide cooling for industrial processes nearby has been pioneered over the past 30 years at Osaka in Japan, wrote University of Birmingham professor of engineering Toby Peters in 2016. He sees a strong case for developing transport refrigeration based on liquid air produced with LNG waste cold in the UK, Spain, Singapore and India. Using a product that he helped develop, he says that LNG cold recycling could generate an economic value of up to £30 [$40] per metric ton of LNG.  (The banner photo shows LNG storage tanks at Enagas' Huelva terminal; photo credit: Enagas)