Global Journal of Engineering and Technology Research (GJETR)

Decarbonisation Pathways for Legacy and Next-Generation Liquefaction Facilities: A Comprehensive Analysis of Emission Sources, Intervention Options and the Retrofit Constraint

Ekelemu, Oghenekaro, Adikwu, Friday Emmanuel

5 September 2026 · Vol. 2, Issue 9, pp. 395-405

DOI: 10.65150/EP-gjetr/V2E9/2026-03

Abstract

Liquefaction facilities are large point sources of carbon dioxide and, through the wider supply chain in which they sit, significant contributors of methane. Decarbonisation commitments now extend across the sector, and the interventions available to a facility differ sharply according to whether it is being designed or has been operating for twenty years. This paper analyses the pathways available to each, organised around the argument that the decisive variable is not the technical availability of an intervention but whether the facility was configured to accept it. Four positions are developed. First, the emission inventory of a liquefaction facility divides into combustion, process, methane and imported energy components whose relative magnitudes differ enough between facilities that a general prescription is unsound and a facility-specific inventory is the prerequisite for any pathway. Second, where combustion dominates the inventory, which is the common but not the universal case, the intervention with the largest potential effect on that component is the substitution of the refrigeration driver energy source, and its feasibility is determined by grid availability and by turbine hall configuration, both of which are effectively fixed at design. Third, methane reduction is argued to offer a favourable ratio of emission benefit to capital cost in the near term, on the reasoning that the measures are largely maintenance and operational rather than capital and that the emissions represent recoverable product; this is an analytical expectation rather than a costed result, and it is constrained principally by measurement rather than by abatement technology, since a facility cannot reduce what it cannot locate. Fourth, carbon capture is technically available and its application to liquefaction is favoured by the presence of a concentrated acid gas removal stream, which distinguishes this sector from most industrial capture applications and which is systematically underexploited. The paper reports no emission figures and no levelised costs, and its comparative rankings should be read as propositions for a facility to test against its own inventory and cost base rather than as findings. It closes on the sequencing question, arguing that operational and measurement interventions should precede capital ones because they are cheap, fast and generate the information the capital decisions require.

Keywords: decarbonization, liquefied natural gas, methane emissions, carbon capture, electrification, retrofit, emissions inventory, energy efficiency, life cycle assessment.

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Ekelemu, Oghenekaro, Adikwu, & Friday Emmanuel (2026). Decarbonisation Pathways for Legacy and Next-Generation Liquefaction Facilities: A Comprehensive Analysis of Emission Sources, Intervention Options and the Retrofit Constraint. Global Journal of Engineering and Technology Research, 2(9), 395-405. https://doi.org/10.65150/EP-gjetr/V2E9/2026-03

@article{Ekelemu2026,
  title   = {Decarbonisation Pathways for Legacy and Next-Generation Liquefaction Facilities: A Comprehensive Analysis of Emission Sources, Intervention Options and the Retrofit Constraint},
  author  = {Ekelemu and Oghenekaro and Adikwu and Friday Emmanuel},
  journal = {Global Journal of Engineering and Technology Research},
  year    = {2026},
  volume  = {2},
  number  = {9},
  pages   = {395-405},
  doi     = {10.65150/EP-gjetr/V2E9/2026-03},
  url     = {https://doi.org/10.65150/EP-gjetr/V2E9/2026-03}
}

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