Jan-2024

Heat trace solutions for the energy transition

Mission-critical heat trace solutions for the energy transition industries are essential as more industrial facilities convert to clean fuels and CO2 reduction.

Jim Dawson and Pele Myers
nVent

Article Summary

Every country has the responsibility to shift the world away from coal and reduce or eliminate carbon emissions to build a more sustainable world. This shift to cleaner energy brings new challenges and requires innovative heat-trace solutions in many industries to ensure reliable operation and uptime in the safest and energy-efficient way.

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is essential in the energy transition as it plays an instrumental role in shifting away from coal and reducing carbon emissions. There is a global race to provide natural gas to the world for industry, power, and heating. Countries with excess natural gas (methane) are currently building LNG liquefaction plants to prepare LNG for export, while countries that need natural gas are building LNG regasification plants. The entire LNG supply chain – from liquefaction and gasification plants to terminals, jetties, and storage tanks – requires specific process temperature maintenance or freeze protection.

Biofuels and clean fuels are essential in the energy transition towards attaining carbon neutrality. Biofuels are derived from renewable sources such as plants, used cooking oils, algae, or biowaste. Biodiesel production, fuel terminal retrofits, renewable diesel refinery conversions, and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production are in progress around the world. In biofuel plants, each step of the refining process – from the handling and storage of feedstock and final products, over the pretreatment and refining processes, to the blending and transport facilities – requires specific process temperature maintenance or freeze protection.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is essential in the energy transition as it plays a critical role in CO₂ removal from the atmosphere. CCS technologies aim to store the CO₂ underground, and CCU technologies aim to utilise CO₂ as feedstock in other industrial processes such as enhanced oil recovery or e-fuels production. CO₂ can be captured from fuel gas (pre-combustion) or flue gas (post-combustion) in many industrial sectors (such as oil and gas, LNG, biofuels, steel, and cement) or even by direct air carbon capture (DAC) in the atmosphere. In CCS plants, the capture, utilisation or storage stages require specific process temperature maintenance or freeze protection.

Hydrogen (H₂) is essential in the energy transition towards attaining a carbon-neutral world. In traditional sectors, H₂ has been used for decades in refineries (for hydrotreatment), petrochemicals, and fertilisers (ammonia). However, new sectors are emerging fast.
• Grey H₂ generation is typically done through steam methane reforming (SMR) from natural gas, where large volumes of CO₂ are vented.
• Blue H₂ has stricter regulations to capture the CO₂ emissions with CCS technologies.
• Green H₂ uses emerging technologies based on a water electrolysis process driven by renewable electricity. This way, H₂ is generated with zero CO₂ emissions and can be used as a clean energy carrier or building block for clean transport fuels.

In H₂ plants, the generation, conversion, transport or storage stages require specific process temperature maintenance or freeze protection.

Managing process temperatures requires an integrated heat management system
Plants and refineries require pre-determined temperature management from pipe freeze protection to high-temperature process maintenance in piping, equipment, tanks, and instruments. Consequently, they need to rely on heat trace cables capable of meeting a broad range of precise design criteria.

Plants and refineries require pre-determined temperature management from pipe freeze protection to high-temperature process maintenance in piping, equipment, tanks, and instruments. Consequently, they need to rely on heat trace cables capable of meeting a broad range of precise design criteria.

nVent offers a portfolio of Raychem cable technologies that cover a wide range of temperature and circuit length requirements, as shown in Figure 1. Moreover, a complete heat management system must also include:
• An engineered design using proprietary TracerLynx 3D HMS software to optimise process maintenance piping, equipment, tanks, and instrument temperatures for precise design criteria and conditions.
• Power distribution system that provides the most efficient power management and electric heat tracing (EHT) designs.
• Control and monitoring system with supervisory software that confirms the system is working properly, offers useful diagnostic information to optimise maintenance and operation, manages alarms, and saves energy.
• Instrument winterisation to protect and ensure reliable operation of instruments.

The following case studies exemplify how a complete system using the right technology can solve comprehensive temperature maintenance requirements. In many cases, a combination of heating cable technologies proves most optimum.

Case study 1: Constant wattage heating cable technology in lng industry
A major LNG facility in Corpus Christi has access to abundant natural gas and premier marine access with two loading berths large enough to receive the largest LNG carriers. The customer’s mission-critical objective is operational reliability and an optimal frost heave prevention system for three 160,000 cubic metres LNG storage tanks. The project required detailed control and monitoring capabilities to minimise operational risk and maximise productivity.  
nVent engineers designed a redundant frost heave prevention system using Raychem constant wattage heaters, connection kits, resistance temperature detectors (RTD), and a 277V/480V power distribution combined with a Raychem NGC-30 heat trace control and monitoring unit to save energy, minimise risk, and maximise productivity. 

Case study 2: Variable power limiting heating cable technology in biofuels industry
One of the largest midstream infrastructure and logistic solution providers in the US is shifting its terminal facilities from petroleum-based to biofuels production. This conversion requires multi-million-dollar terminal retrofits to enable the aggregation, storage, blending, and distribution of biofuels, mainly biodiesel, all totalling up to 5,000 miles of pipeline and 130 liquid petroleum terminals.