Liquid air energy storage (LAES) technology has air liquefaction as the charging process and the regasification of the stored liquid air as the discharging one. The paper focuses on the discharge stage, and presents a study on a thermodynamic cycle derived from the ideal regasification process. That way, the practical process presents some design characteristics favorable to an effective energy recovery. Two key operations adopted: a counter current regeneration and a recom-pression of a part of the expanded gas. The concept suppresses the need for cold storage and the related thermodynamic losses and equipment cost. The reversion of the cycle is possible for liquefaction. The symmetry between regasification and liquefaction suggests that the two operations are in principle “superimposable”. The physical integration of both sub-systems leads to a single dual-functional liquefaction-regasification facility. Compared to the state of the art method, the novel LAES design opens up new perspectives in terms of round trip efficiency improvement and capital cost reduction.