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LNG cold and cryogenic recovery: Engineering and integration

Cold cannot travel, so users must sit beside the terminal

What this tab covers Engineering and operating integration: how tightly it is coupled to the host process, how steady the waste stream is, and how hard it is to retrofit.

Cold users are tied to an LNG terminal's send-out pattern, so they need backup refrigeration or vaporisers that can take over instantly.

Process interdependence (coupling risk)

Mixed

The terminal's first duty is to deliver gas to the grid, so any cold-recovery loop must be bypassable: if the air separation unit or power cycle trips, conventional seawater vaporisers must regasify the full flow. Conversely, a cold user loses its cold whenever send-out drops, so it needs electric refrigeration as a backup. Osaka Gas linked its Senboku terminals with a 1.3 km subsea cryogenic pipeline partly to balance cold supply between users.3

Senboku 1-2 cryogenic link 1.3 km subsea pipeline3

Load factor and intermittency

Mixed

Cold availability tracks gas demand, which is seasonal and, in import-dependent markets such as India, sensitive to spot LNG prices. A large terminal offers a lot of cold at peak: a 2016 trade report cites up to 110 MW of usable cold for a 5.5 Mt a year terminal at maximum send-out (below the roughly 145 MW year-round average implied by 830 kJ/kg, calculated, so the report's basis is probably usable rather than total cold). India's Dahej terminal, expanded from 17.5 to 22.5 Mt a year on 31 March 2026, would release about 5.2 TWh of cold a year if run at capacity (calculated from 830 kJ/kg), roughly 590 MW on average (calculated). Actual utilisation will be lower.136

Cold at a 5.5 Mtpa terminal up to 110 MW at maximum send-out3 Dahej regasification capacity 22.5 Mtpa (from 31 March 2026)6 Dahej theoretical cold about 5.2 TWh/yr, about 590 MW average (calculated)16

Footprint and retrofit complexity

Mixed

Cold cannot travel far, so users must sit within the terminal fence or an adjoining industrial park; Indonesia's Bantaeng terminal was proposed in 2016 around such a park. Retrofitting an existing terminal means new cryogenic heat exchangers and tie-ins, which require careful shutdown planning. LAES plants are large but use standard industrial gas equipment; Highview Power's 50 MW, 300 MWh plant at Carrington near Manchester stores energy as liquid air in tanks with separate hot and cold stores and was due to commission in 2026.358

Highview Carrington 50 MW / 300 MWh (6 hours)5

Sources

  1. LNG cold energy utilization: Prospects and challenges (He, Chong, Zheng, Ju, Linga), Energy 170: 557-568 Elsevier (via RePEc IDEAS), 2019
  2. Cold energy extracts value from the LNG supply chain (trade report, 2016) Riviera Maritime Media, 2016
  3. Energy stored as liquefied air: GBP 300m investment triggers construction of UK's first commercial-scale plant The Chemical Engineer (IChemE), 2024
  4. Petronet LNG Limited Dahej Terminal Capacity Expands to 22.5 MMTPA Tank Terminals (relaying Petronet LNG announcement), 2026
  5. Energy storage innovation powers Highview scale-up UK Research and Innovation, 2025