1. Introduction
India import around 80% of crude oil to reach its energy demands. Due to recent huge natural gas discoveries in
recent, and some other factors like low price, low carbon dioxide emission, higher calorific value due to high content
of methane than other hydrocarbon resources, natural gas market has also started growing faster. In India also, use of
natural gas in industries, CGD, transportation is increasing. India has also huge amount of natural gas reserve. But due
to restriction in pricing of natural gas, companies are not much interested in exploiting it. Instead they are importing
natural gas from other countries in the form of LNG-Liquefied Natural Gas. Recently India has regasification capacity
of 23 MMTPA. However operational capacity is around 15-17 MMTPA, and it is expected to increase further up to
44 MMTPA by the FY 2020 and around 55 MMTPA by FY 2025 [1] , as GAIL has recently made contract of importing
5.3 MMTPA LNG with two US companies, IOCL is going to build 5 MMTPA regasification facility, Petronet LNG
is further expanding its regasification facility [2]
.
LNG is nothing but Natural Gas liquefied at -162 degree Celsius and atmospheric pressure. The main purpose of
transforming Natural Gas into LNG is for long distance transportation. And doing so it will also reduce the impurities
like water, carbon dioxide, sulfur etc. By converting Natural Gas into LNG it reduces volume by 600th times. It is
obvious that it requires lots of energy to produce it. But during LNG regasification cold energy (Exergy) is simply
dumped into sea water or in atmosphere. Instead we can utilize that cold energy in many ways. In fact, India is a
country where even small amount of energy is precious.