Low-temperature liquid CO2 could boil off during ship transportation because of the heat ingress from the surroundings to inside the tank, which causes the tank pressure to increase. To maintain the operating pressure range of the tank, the re-liquefaction process is indispensable. Three design alternatives to the re-liquefaction process using boil-off CO2 as a refrigerant are proposed and compared. A systematic procedure to find the optimal design of CO2 re-liquefaction is provided considering operational constraints such as the cooling water temperature and compressor discharge temperature. The optimal operating conditions of the proposed processes are determined by solving nonlinear programming. The compressor power consumption as the operation energy for the CO2 re-liquefaction ranges from 60 to 120 kW/t CO2 given the operational constraints. As the seawater temperature is lower and the discharge temperature limit is higher, the proposed Alternative 2 design consumes less power than the other designs. (C) 2017 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.