Super Coolers

 

supercoolers

 

Without proper cooling there is no such thing as a good semi refrigerated gas carrier today. Many older, but still sailing gas carriers are designed to operate with low efficient cooling capacity which limits their performance and lowers their customers trust and goodwill. In fact many of these were designed more to maintain temperature rather than cool down the cargo. This was sufficient during the 70’s and 80’s, even a period in the 90’s. However not so in this millennium. This is another reason that we will see many ships built before 1990 be retired from these trades earlier. The lack of cooling capacity while they are still adequate ships for other types of trades with simpler cargoes not requiring to cool down.
At I.M. Skaugen we have taken this knowledge and experience seriously when we started to conceive our new building program back in late 90’s. A program which was commissioned in the year 2000 is still running today. We discovered that there was no contradiction between designing reliquefaction with higher liquefaction capasity and lower environmental impact with the same power consumption. This by selecting new refrigerants, more efficient heat exchange, applying better insulation materials and reducing heat transfer area.
The first vessels in our new range of gas carriers, delivered in the period up to 2004, nicknamed “Super Coolers” simply because they outperformed any other gas carrier in the market with an ethylene cooling  performance of about 2°C per 24 hours.
This development led us to continue our innovative thinking within the field of cryogenic technology, where we knew there was still much room for improvement, in a way of optimizing energy consumption as well as becoming even more environmentally friendly by
reducing emissions.
Knowing that LNG would become a future commodity for smaller scale energy distribution network we decided already in 2003 to include LNG on our cargo commodity list.
LNG with a boiling temperature of minus 163°C compared to Ethylene of minus 104°C became a new challenge to us where we had to do R&D as well as designing new arrangements and selecting equipment never used on gas carriers at our scale, as well as for any scale of gas carriers.
Our more than three years R&D program resulted
into new liquefaction technologies enabling an increase in performance by another 10%. The result of this development we can now observe in our “Wintergas carriers”(WG) which have superior performance by being able to cool down an ethylene cargo near to 3.5°C per day. Our first “Multigas carrier” (MG) was recently delivered and her reliquefaction capacity is outperforming the Super Coolers by up to 0.5°C per 24 hours.  We have now selected propylene as refrigerant which enables us a considerably lower condensation temperature compared to Freon 404.
Our new and innovative Mini LNG reliquefaction technology development has taken four years to design and build.
Now the first such unit
has been installed on the Norgas Innovation.  Preliminary
results indicate that this unit will live up to its promises by enabling a liquefaction capacity of up to 20 tons of LNG per 24 hours. A new type  of Freon free  refrigerant has been
designed for this unit.
Our R&D seems to pay of well.
We are now performing better with less energy consumption. Our environmental profile has improved drastically.  Less emissions of Co2 and NOx, and with our MG carries we can say we are “Freon free” as well.

Without proper cooling there is no such thing as a good semi refrigerated gas carrier today. Many older, but still sailing gas carriers are designed to operate with low efficient cooling capacity which limits their performance and lowers their customers trust and goodwill. In fact many of these were designed more to maintain temperature rather than cool down the cargo. This was sufficient during the 70’s and 80’s, even a period in the 90’s. However not so in this millennium. This is another reason that we will see many ships built before 1990 be retired from these trades earlier. The lack of cooling capacity while they are still adequate ships for other types of trades with simpler cargoes not requiring to cool down. 

At I.M. Skaugen we have taken this knowledge and experience seriously when we started to conceive our new building program back in late 90’s. A program which was commissioned in the year 2000 is still running today. We discovered that there was no contradiction between designing reliquefaction with higher liquefaction capasity and lower environmental impact with the same power consumption. This by selecting new refrigerants, more efficient heat exchange, applying better insulation materials and reducing heat transfer area.

The first vessels in our new range of gas carriers, delivered in the period up to 2004, nicknamed “Super Coolers” simply because they outperformed any other gas carrier in the market with an ethylene cooling  performance of about 2°C per 24 hours.

supertank

This development led us to continue our innovative thinking within the field of cryogenic technology, where we knew there was still much room for improvement, in a way of optimizing energy consumption as well as becoming even more environmentally friendly by reducing emissions.

Knowing that LNG would become a future commodity for smaller scale energy distribution network we decided already in 2003 to include LNG on our cargo commodity list. 

LNG with a boiling temperature of minus 163°C compared to Ethylene of minus 104°C became a new challenge to us where we had to do R&D as well as designing new arrangements and selecting equipment never used on gas carriers at our scale, as well as for any scale of gas carriers.

INPROVEDOur more than three years R&D program resulted into new liquefaction technologies enabling an increase in performance by another 10%. The result of this development we can now observe in our “Wintergas carriers”(WG) which have superior performance by being able to cool down an ethylene cargo near to 3.5°C per day. Our first “Multigas carrier” (MG) was recently delivered and her reliquefaction capacity is outperforming the Super Coolers by up to 0.5°C per 24 hours.  We have now selected propylene as refrigerant which enables us a considerably lower condensation temperature compared to Freon 404. 

Our new and innovative Mini LNG reliquefaction technology development has taken four years to design and build. 

Now the first such unit has been installed on the Norgas Innovation.  Preliminary  results indicate that this unit will live up to its promises by enabling a liquefaction capacity of up to 20 tons of LNG per 24 hours. A new type  of Freon free  refrigerant has been designed for this unit. 

Our R&D seems to pay of well.  We are now performing better with less energy consumption. Our environmental profile has improved drastically.  Less emissions of Co2 and NOx, and with our MG carries we can say we are “Freon free” as well.

supercooler_capacity