Linde unveils CCM

The modularisation concept means that plants, plant components and special process units are premanufactured at production sites known as yards and then shipped as a whole to the customer.

Marcus Lang, Executive Vice President Natural Gas Plants at Linde Engineering, said: “Customers benefit from this approach on multiple levels […] A modular concept enables us to deliver complex projects extremely efficiently.”

Linde engineers are increasingly turning to this modular approach, as plants often have to be built at remote locations with limited infrastructure. The modularisation concept allows Linde to keep the amount of work carried out under extreme conditions to a minimum. This approach played a key role, for example, in enabling construction of the world scale LNG plant in Hammerfest, Norway.

High wages and an insufficient pool of qualified personnel can also hamper on-site construction plans. This is why, last year, Linde assembled an entire nitrogen rejection unit (NRU) in Europe that was then shipped to a customer on the other side of the world. The NRU was destined for the coast of Western Australia, where it will be used to remove nitrogen from gas destined for private households, thus increasing its calorific value. Linde manufactured core components such as the cryogenic heat exchangers at its plant in Schalchen, Germany, and shipped these to the Spanish port of Tarragona. Engineers then assembled the process module in Tarragona before it was transported by ship to Australia.

Coordinating the different sub-processes is just as big a challenge as technical execution. Ralf Bellaire, Head of Engineering at Linde's Engineering Division, added: “To provide our customers with the best technologies and the right concepts, we have bundled all of our expertise at our ‘Competence Centre Modularisation’ […] Our modular design offers four key benefits to customers: it cuts costs, accelerates time-to-solution, reduces risk and increases the quality of the process unit.”

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/gas-processing/03042017/linde-unveils-ccm/