The research team led by Professor Daejun Chang and Professor Paal Bergan from the Division of Ocean Systems Engineering in cooperation with POSCO developed a new liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage tank with a storage capacity 20 times bigger than those of existing tanks.
 
▲ The new LNG storage tanks are expected to help reduce energy consumption.
LNG is natural gas that has been converted to liquid form for ease of storage or transport. LNG storage tanks can be found in ground, above ground, or in LNG carriers. The tanks are designed to store LNG at a very low temperature of -162 degrees Celsius. They have double containers, where the inner contains LNG and the outer container contains insulation materials.
 
The biggest difference between new tanks and existing tanks is the shape; the new ones have a cubic shape, whereas the existing ones have a cylindrical shape. The conventional LNG storage tanks were cylindrical because a big size cube cannot cope with the high pressure from LNG. However, the research team succeeded in designing the cubic tank by making a lattice structure inside the tank. This lattice structure can disperse the pressure delivered to the exterior wall.
 
As the tank now has a cubic design, it only needs approximately 40% of the space that the existing tank needed when storing the same amount of LNG. Therefore, when the new tank is used as the LNG fuel tank for mega container ships, about 900 more containers can be loaded onto the ships. The research team expects about 9 billion Korean Won of annual transportation profit per ship.
 

Professor Daejun Chang said, “This newly developed plaid high-pressure tank technology will bring an innovation to production, transportation, and storage industries.” He further added, “It can reduce more than 20% of the energy consumption in the fields of LNG, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and compressed natural gas (CNG) distribution by establishing the high-pressure supply chain.” 

Copyright © The KAIST Herald Unauthorized reproduction, redistribution prohibited