Compressed Gas News

Hornblower Energy LLC, in partnership with the Port of San Franciso, the U.S. Department of Energy and six corporate partners, including Air Liquide and Glosten, is leading a project to demonstrate the feasibility and viability of using hydrogen (H2) as a maritime fuel.The project is located at Pier 68 in San Francisco. DOE selected the project for funding in 2020. It’s supposed to be completed in 2025 but there are important decision dates before then. So far, project activities have concentrated on planning and modeling.

The second-largest U.S. liquefied natural gas export plant, idled for five months by a fire, must receive full approvals before a planned November restart can begin, regulator Pipeline Hazardous Materials and Safety Administration (PHMSA) said on Wednesday.Full approval adds to the hurdles for restarting Freeport LNG, one of the earliest and biggest U.S. export facilities. The closely-held company aims to restore more than 85% of pre-fire processing capacity next month and complete…

South Korea’s shipbuilder Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) is looking to further cut its workforce,  and have employees return part of their salaries in order to cut costs, according to Yonhap News Agency. SHI unveiled a self-restructuring program that centers on cutting the workforce and having executives return part of their salaries last year, in order to tide over a protracted slump in the shipbuilding sector. The report said that Samsung Heavy was forced to reduce its workforce by 1,500 in 2016 through an early retirement scheme. The shipyard aims to slash its workforce by a total of 5,000 by 2018. The shipyard won $4.8 billion worth of orders to build 13 ships, including two offshore plants, in the first six months of the year.

Last September the test bed in Rostock was the stage of a single lift of the RL-K 7500 subsea crane. The same crane was then loaded and shipped to the South Korean customer. On December 21, a new Liebherr RL-K 7500 started its long journey to South Korea. after waiting since the middle of September for its shipment at the pier of the Liebherr factory in Rostock. Mid-December, the transport ship arrived at the Liebherr factory, and the RL-K 7500 was loaded aboard together with another model of Liebherr’s range of knuckle boom cranes, the RL-K 4200.

Despite its unquestionable allure, LNG as a fuel carries with it as many risks as it does answers to the problems it promises to solve. As industry and OEM’s work to remove any doubt, the collaborative effort outpaces the slow-moving regulatory machine. Even as Lloyds Register predicts that LNG will reach a maximum 11% share of marine propulsion solutions in 2030, it also says that segments with higher proportion of small ships will see the highest LNG uptake. And, at the same time, says the global classification society in its recent paper entitled, Global Marine Fuel Trends 2030, the marine fuel mix for bulk, containers and tankers…

During customer days at the production plant in Rostock in January 2013 Liebherr presented its new subsea crane, type RL-K 7500. With this new knuckle boom crane the company extends its range of offshore cranes for subsea operations. The RL-K 7500 is able to lift up to 260t in the air and handle loads down to a water depth of 3,400m. The maximum rope diameter is 100mm, the maximum overturning moment of the crane is 75,000kNm. Depending on customers’ specifications, the boom configuration allows for working radii of up to 50 m.

Scuderi Group an engine development company, announce the simultaneous publication by both the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) of its primary patent application covering Miller Cycle operation applied to a split-cycle engine. The patent application relates to a turbocharged split-cycle engine that divides the four strokes of a conventional Otto cycle engine over two paired cylinders. One cylinder…

Fugro GEOS won a contract award which provides Qatar Shell with support for a seabed water temperature monitoring system. The 5-year contract will ensure round-the-clock support and maintenance of the metocean monitoring system, which is part of the Pearl GTL (gas-to-liquids) project in Ras Laffan, Qatar. Pearl GTL is jointly developed by Qatar Petroleum and Shell. Designed, installed and maintained by Fugro GEOS, the monitoring system is a critical element, providing real-time information to help minimise flow assurance problems in pipelines which link the two Pearl offshore platforms with the onshore plant. Using acoustic telemetry, data are sent from the seabed to the platforms and the system interfaces in real-time with the platform’s control system.

Liebherr has announced the industry’s first hydraulic hybrid drive for mobile harbour cranes. The new Pactronic - hybrid drive system addresses two critical issues: increasing handling performance and reducing fuel consumption. The Liebherr Pactronic is a new hydraulic hybrid drive system. It is characterized by an energy storage device. A hydraulic accumulator supplements the fluid pump in delivering power to the system. It serves as a pressure storage reservoir incorporating a gas in conjunction with a hydraulic fluid. Energy is stored in this compressed gas to be released upon demand.

SeaOne Maritime Corp. is contracting ABS to class and certify the proposed conversion of several existing 150,000 dwt suezmax oil tankers to Compressed Gas Liquid Carriers (CGLCs). Earlier this year ABS issued its Approval In Principle, or AIP, on the SeaOne containment system using the ABS Guidance Notes on Review and Approval of Novel Concepts. The ABS AIP process draws upon engineering, testing and risk assessments in order to determine if the concept provides acceptable levels of safety in line with current offshore and marine industry practice. The methodology relies heavily on risk assessment techniques as a way to better understand and anticipate structural and operational issues related to a new or novel concept.

On July 1, 2003 the Coast Guard published in the Federal Register the long anticipated regulations concerning maritime port and vessel security. This is a major rulemaking printed in seven separate individual rulemakings. These rulemakings concern compliance with provisions of the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 (MTSA) and implementation of the International Maritime Organization's (IMO's) International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) Code. The regulations incorporate the ISPS Code into the domestic maritime trade. The ISPS Code applies to all port facilities and vessels (MODUs, cargo & passenger vessels subject to SOLAS) in international trade. Any vessel not on the above list must still comply with the new security provisions of 33 CFR Parts 101 and 103.