Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Self-Serving, Arrogant Port Director Edward Campirano Promotes LNG

Port of Brownsville Director Eduardo Campirano
Brownsville and Cameron County have a shitpot full of "public servants" like Port Director Eduardo Campirano, but need none.  The instant Campirano and two other port officials chowed down on that $1,800 taxpayer-subsidized meal in Shanghai, China, they disqualified themselves as stewards of public money and interests.  It bears mentioning that the Port of Brownsville threesome did not choke on that extravagant meal or lose sleep over the expensive burden to the country's poorest taxpayers, but simply defecated that grub, then went back the next day for $1,600 more of the pricey fare, inviting the BEDC's Jason Hilts to share in the gluttony.  

Not surprisingly, the Port of Brownsville, an entity that should be self-supporting with proper leadership, continues to rely on millions of dollars of locally-generated taxpayer monies to continue operation.  Port Director Campirano, in a Brownsville Herald Letter to the Editor,  has the audacity to push for the proposed LNG plants to be strewn from the Port of Brownsville to near the city limits of Port Isabel.  While parroting the platitudes of Big Oil and Gas, Camparino gives us his schoolgirl description of LNG:  

"LNG is the liquefied form of the natural gas that people use in their homes for cooking and heating, and has been safely handled for many years." (Eduardo Camparino, Letter to the Editor, Brownsville Herald, 10/5/2015.)

Yes, doofus, but LNG plants do not simply burn natural gas like grandma heating tortillas on her two burner range!  

The purpose of an LNG plant is to condense natural gas into a liquid so it can be shipped economically.  That process, extremely complex, requires an ENORMOUS amount of energy and releases hydrocarbons, mercury, hydrogen sulfide and other contaminants into the atmosphere.  Millions of gallons of hot effluent must also be disposed daily, likely in our case, into the pristine estuaries and bird sanctuaries of eastern Cameron County.

The Chyoda Corporation of Yokohma, Japan, builder of the world's largest LNG plants, explains the process:  





A liquefied natural gas plant (LNG plant) is roughly divided into five processes: (1) pretreatment, (2) acid gas removal, (3) dehydration, (4) liquefaction and (5) heavy oil separation.

(1) In the pretreatment process, undesired substances are removed from the gas taken from a gas field. Then the gas is separated using a slug catcher into oil and water which are
Slug Catcher
then weighed.

(2)Natural gas taken from a gas field contains environmental pollutants like hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and carbon dioxide (CO2). These impure substances are absorbed and removed from natural gas with an amine absorber (acid gas removal or AGR). With the use of a sulfur removal unit (SRU), sulfur is extracted from the hydrogen sulfide in the removed pollutant.

(3)An adsorbent is used to remove water from the natural gas from which impure substances have been removed so that ice will not form during the subsequent liquefaction process.

(4)Traces of harmful mercury are removed before liquefaction.
Sulfur Removal Unit


(5)The heavy compounds separation process is the core of an LNG plant in which natural gas is cooled and liquefied to –160°C or less using the principle of refrigeration. Because gas is cooled and liquefied to an extremely-low temperature during the process, an enormous amount of energy is consumed. How much this energy can be reduced is important, so various ingenious processes have been proposed and commercialized.

Major liquefaction processes are as follows:

1)C3-MR method: The C3-MR method is currently the main method. Propane and mixed coolants (nitrogen, methane, ethane and propane) are used as the coolant (APCI), and an improvement on this method called the AP-X method is also used for large LNG plants.

2)AP-X method: As liquefaction trains get larger, they approach a limit on the size of heat exchanger that can be produced and transported. This process can increase LNG production capacity by adding LNG sub-coolers with nitrogen coolant used according to the C3-MR method, without increasing the size of the main heat exchanger (APCI).

3)Cascade method: This method sequentially uses propane, ethylene and methane as the coolant (Phillips).
Add caption


4)DMR method: This method uses two kinds of mixed coolants (an ethane and propane mix and a nitrogen-methane, ethane and propane mix) (Shell).

5) SMR method: This method is called the PRICO process and uses only one kind of mixed coolant (Black & Veatch).

All of these methods require enormous refrigeration compressors. Gas turbines used for giant power plants are used to drive them, so elaborate engineering based on experience and high-level knowledge is required to design, produce and assemble the compressors and gas turbines. 

18 comments:

  1. Thank you for that explanation. its the most easy to understand I have read.Now I know for sure I don't want those plants here.

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  2. Campirano and the other gas bags backing this scheme need to start looking for other jobs. Hopefully jobs where they can do less damage to Cameron county and its inhabitants. Next election they're going to be unemployed.

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  3. Jobs and economic growth have up and down sides. Visionaries such as these see the long term benefits; skeptics who are informed present the downs and the naysayers and ner-do-wells will simply piss and moan because they haven't the intellect to do either. The rest of us must weigh it all out and decide. Choose wisely.

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    1. The question remains: Who is it that receives the long term benefits you mention?

      It certainly isn't the taxpayers and citizens. It is the arrogant gasbags who are promoting the air pollution and destruction of tourism. Al this for a few lousy few hundred jobs.

      The liquified natural gas is not even for use in the USA, it is for Mexico and shipment overseas.

      I guess you are not too proud of your decisions or intellect since you are posting anony(mouse)ly. I surmise you want to be re-elected.

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    2. Anonymous at 8:16 is full of it...."visionaries ", "long term benefits "......what the hell are you babbling about. The long term results will be harmful to the environment and those plants will close after a few years in operation and the county taxpayers will be stuck with the clean up bill.

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  4. I'm with 5:17 PM. This clowns, especially, Hilts, are like leeches on this community's ass. Career leeches with no showing of any success in anything. It's not good to generalize, but is appropriate here. Loosers!

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  5. This, of course, means the elected Navigation District Board, is in favor of the gas plants. There is no way Campirano wrote this letter without approval of the Board. The Board could stop this in it's tracks if they wanted to. All they have to do is say "No". I repeat, they are an elected board. Masso, now running for DA, is one of them. We must make sure that there is a consequence to their decision.

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    1. "there is no way campirano wrote this letter".claro que no escribio esa carta, que sabe estePENDEJO de gas,lo unico de gas que sabe son los PEDOS que se hecha. seria bueno que los federales ya le dieran una chekadita al distrito de navegacion.

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    2. "Without the board's approval "......read much?

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    3. The same commissioners at the Port of Brownsville, Ralph Cowen, John Reed and Tito "Da Plane, Boss" Lopez, that voted for this crap have the nerve to run for reelection. They don't give a shit what people think. They will ride out all the nipping from the old white folks and environmentalists. It's a done deal, Barton, deal with it. The commissioners and that gringo wannabe Eddie Campirano has allowed the LNG industry to take a dump in our backyard and they want us to wipe their ass too!!! We will begin to breathe dirty air in three years and the last of the gringos will start selling their shit and head to McAllen or San Antonio to get away from the New Beaumont igniting the future of South Texas.

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  6. What we really want to hear from Campriano is that he plans to end the tax we pay to the port. It is about time this business...BND....ends its needs for being on the public tit. NO MORE TAXES TO BND. If Campriano were to announce that, he would get a positive vote from the public for LNG.

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  7. Please cite a single source for your contention that LNG liquefaction "releases hydrocarbons, mercury, hydrogen sulfide and other contaminants into the atmosphere."

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    1. Simply Google LNG, hydrocarbons, mercury, hydrogen sulfide, etc. It took me about 30 seconds to find this White Paper from UT on Hydrocarbons from the process. It was too large to print here.

      NGC+ Liquid Hydrocarbon Drop Out Task Group February 28, 2005 Gas Quality White Paper Control of Hydrocarbon Liquid Drop Out 2 Section 1 - Introduction 1.0 Objective 1.1 The objective of this report is to provide background on the issue of gas quality, specifically hydrocarbon liquid drop out, and recommend how it can be managed in a way that balances the concerns of all stakeholders in the value chain1 .

      These concerns are summarized below: 1.1.1 Producers want the ability to supply natural gas to meet increasing demand. They seek to maximize their natural gas revenue stream by electing the level to process their gas based on market conditions while satisfying pipeline tariff, safety and environmental requirements. 1.1.2 Gas Processors want to know the long term specification requirements for the quality of gas to be delivered into transmission pipelines in order to set operating conditions, evaluate potential investments in reconfiguring their plants to optimize the production of thermal content and meet the pipeline quality specifications and, in many instances, renegotiate the contracts that they have with the gas producers. 1.1.3 Pipelines want to provide transportation flexibility to meet demand but are concerned about operational safety and reliability, system integrity and environmental issues. They are also concerned about whether components of gas they accept for delivery may make the gas in their pipeline unacceptable to distribution systems and end users. 1.1.4 Local distribution companies want to meet customer demand but are concerned about operational safety and reliability, system integrity, and environmental issues as well as the impacts on end use equipment. They have little or no existing capacity to remove or extract hydrocarbons from their systems. 1.1.5 Direct connect customers (e.g., power plants and industrial users directly connected to transmission pipeline) want uniformity of gas quality because of safety and environmental concerns, and potential negative impacts on equipment, end products, and operational reliability.

      They have little or no existing capacity to remove or extract hydrocarbons from their systems. 1.1.6 End Users (e.g., customers receiving gas from the LDC) expect uniformity of gas quality for appliances, industrial applications, including use as a feedstock or building block in chemical manufacturing. 1 There is a separate effort directed at higher heating values, including the role of liquefied natural gas. This effort is referred to as “interchangeability” and is being managed by the Natural Gas Council Interchangeability Task Group. Gas Quality White Paper Control of Hydrocarbon Liquid Drop Out 3 1.2 Overview of the Report This report will examine the occurrence of hydrocarbon liquids in natural gas, the role of gas processing, and historical measures used to control hydrocarbon liquid drop out. There are seven sections, including this Introduction. They are: 1.2.1 Section 2 - Liquid Hydrocarbons in Natural Gas This section describes the sources of natural gas and shows that all gas as produced is not the same. It describes the role of treatment and processing to provide a more uniform, fungible commodity. It also describes the challenges to controlling hydrocarbon liquid drop out when faced with the influences of pressure reductions and ambient temperature. 1.2.2 Section 3 – Hydrocarbon Liquid Drop Out Control Measures This section describes measures used historically to control hydrocarbon liquid drop out, including heating value (Btu/volume), and composite concentrations of heavier weight hydrocarbons (such as the mole fraction of heavier weight hydrocarbons measured as the “pentane plus” fraction, referred to as C5+ or the “hexane plus”, referred to as C6+)2 .

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  8. The only thing those Port Board of Directors know about, Gas is the FARTS they release after eating those $1800.00 dinners when they vacation to China at tax payers expense.

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  9. Jim the world runs on petroleum and will continue to even when our grandchildren are our age. Enjoy the read.
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003856

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  10. global warming was made up by the Chinese to destroy the coal industry in America so that they can have a cheaper price for coal.

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    ReplyDelete