Abstract: A natural gas liquefying apparatus includes: a precooling unit, which is a treatment unit configured to precool natural gas; a liquefying unit, which is a treatment unit configured to liquefy the natural gas; a refrigerant cooling unit, which is a treatment unit configured to cool a liquefying refrigerant; a compression unit configured to compress vaporized refrigerants; and a pipe rack including air-cooled coolers arrayed and arranged on an upper surface. The treatment units and the compression unit are separately arranged in a first arrangement region and a second arrangement region arranged opposed to each other across a long side of the pipe rack. The pipe rack interposed between the first and second arrangement regions has a region in which no air-cooled cooler is arranged in order to arrange a plurality of pipes, through which refrigerants are allowed to flow, in a direction of a short side of the pipe rack.

Abstract: A clustering method includes the steps of: creating a plant model in which connection relationships between a plurality of devices (31) forming a processing plant (1) and pipes (4) are represented by a graph showing a linking relationship between a node (51) and an edge (52); setting, regarding the plant model, a cluster division condition; and performing, by a computer, the cluster division of the plant model by searching for an edge between the clusters in which modularity is further increased while the cluster division condition is satisfied.

Abstract: A natural gas liquefying apparatus includes: a precooling unit, which is a treatment unit configured to precool natural gas; a liquefying unit, which is a treatment unit configured to liquefy the natural gas; a refrigerant cooling unit, which is a treatment unit configured to cool a liquefying refrigerant; a compression unit configured to compress vaporized refrigerants; and a pipe rack including air-cooled coolers arrayed and arranged on an upper surface. The treatment units and the compression unit are separately arranged in a first arrangement region and a second arrangement region arranged opposed to each other across a long side of the pipe rack. The pipe rack interposed between the first and second arrangement regions has a region in which no air-cooled cooler is arranged in order to arrange a plurality of pipes, through which refrigerants are allowed to flow, in a direction of a short side of the pipe rack.