Recently, Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding (Group) announced that it had named and delivered the world’s first river-sea direct 14,000 m³ liquefied natural gas (LNG) bunkering vessel “Huaihe Nengyuan Qihang” two months ahead of schedule, which was independently developed, designed and built by the company. This marks the official delivery of China’s first LNG marine cryogenic centrifugal compressor developed by Shengu Group for this project.
It is understood that marine LNG carriers are special means of transporting LNG, which are internationally recognized as “three high products” with high technology, high difficulty and high value-added, and are regarded as the “pearl” in the crown of shipbuilding. As the core equipment of LNG carriers, cryogenic compressor has been monopolized by foreign countries for its design and manufacturing technology.
As a leading enterprise in the domestic wind turbine industry, Shengu Group, in response to the LNG evaporated gas recovery and fuel power demand of offshore LNG carriers, has carried out the pneumatic scheme design, body structure design and dynamic analysis, complete set of technology development as well as the performance test and verification work, has successfully solved the key technical problems such as model level development technology, mechanical property analysis technology, low temperature insulation technology and other key technical problems of marine LNG compressor. Taking 14 months, Shengu Group successfully developed China’s first centrifugal LNG compressor, which passed the factory test and sea trial operation, and was finally successfully delivered.
The successful development of this product is inseparable from the test verification. In May this year, the first LNG carrier with cryogenic centrifugal compressor in the shipyard began to carry out real ship tests. Both tests were passed with good performance indicators, making the shipowner and the shipyard very satisfied with the test results.
The successful development of this product marks China’s offshore LNG transportation has got rid of the dependence on imported centrifugal compressors and filled the gap. At the same time, Shengu Group has completed the development of cryogenic centrifugal compressors for large natural gas carriers.