South Korea’s shipbuilding giant Samsung Heavy Industries said it has launched an LNG pilot test facility at its Geoje shipyard.
The shipyard held a launching ceremony on Wednesday attended by ship owners including Kogas, Celsius Shipping, Maran Gas Maritime, Eni, and classification societies ABS, BV, DNV, KR, and LR.
This is the first R&D facility for LNG in the shipbuilding and offshore industry, according to SHI.
Installed on land which is 3,630 square metres large, the facility will develop and test core technologies for the LNG value chain from natural gas production, transportation, and storage to supply.
Taking advantage of the new facility, SHI aims to further solidify its position in building eco-friendly vessels like LNG carriers and LNG-fueled ships, it said.
In addtion, the completion of the LNG test facility would support advancement of technologies such as natural gas liquefaction and reliquefaction process, gas engine and fueling system.
This also includes cryogenic insulation storage containers, regasification and cold power generation and localisation of LNG-related equipment, SHI said.
“Using the facility, SHI’s in-house innovative LNG technologies, such as SENSE-IV, the only natural gas liquefaction system in the shipbuilding industry and S-REGAS (CGR), the first-ever regasification system linked to power generation utilising cold energy were successfully developed,” SHI CEO Jin-Taek Jung, said.
According to SHI, the shipbuilder has received orders for more than 170 LNG carriers and designed and built the world’s first FLNG.
Moreover, it has won multiple deals this year to build LNG-fueled vessels, it said.