Study of integrated metal hydrides heat pump and cascade utilization of liquefied natural gas cold energy recovery system

The traditional cold energy utilization of the liquefied natural gas system needs a higher temperature heat source to improve exergy efficiency, which barricades the application of the common low quality thermal energy. The adoption of a metal hydride heat pump system powered by low quality energy could provide the necessary high temperature heat and reduce the overall energy consumption. Thus, an LNG cold energy recovery system integrating metal hydride heat pump was proposed, and the exergy analysis method was applied to study the case. The performance of the proposed integration system was evaluated. Moreover, some key factors were also theoretically investigated about their influences on the system performance. According to the results of the analysis, some optimization directions of the integrated system were also pointed out. (C) 2010 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.