Chinese company Wester Shell Cryogenic Equipment Co. (WSCE) was contracted by natural gas producer Renergen to build a plant for the production of liquefied natural gas and liquid helium near Virginia in the Free State.
Since 2004, WSCE has been manufacturing small scale equipment for natural gas plants. The gas plant, which is expected to be operational in the first commercial natural gas plant in South Africa in the first half of 2021, will produce up to 2,700 gigajoules of liquefied natural gas and 350 kg of liquid helium per day. The plant is built in modules the size of standard containers for easy transport and installation.
Founder and CEO of WSCE, Dr. Jia Lin Xiang, has developed a helium cryogenic testing laboratory for the US space agency Nasa, and he was chief cryogenic engineer at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York for more than ten years, according to a Sens statement issued by Renergen on Monday .