Despite tough economic environment in oil and gas industry, production of liquefied natural gas continues to improve rapidly. The new milestone in gas industry development became a technology of Floating Liquefied Natural Gas - FLNG, designed by Shell's experts in partnership with Technip and Samsung. This solution provides preparation, liquefaction, storage and shipment of LNG directly at sea.
The key idea of this unique project is to unlock gas resources from underwater fields too uneconomic or challenging to reach from land, helping meet growing energy demand with the cleanest-burning hydrocarbon. Traditionally, LNG plants are built on land. By moving production and processing offshore, new energy resources that are too uneconomic or challenging to develop from land can be brought within reach.
It should be noted that FLNG is an extremely complex vessel, from a technological point of view and all FLNG components (from steam turbines to the pipelines) shall comply with the most stringent requirements, in view of operation in adverse conditions, sea water, extremely low temperatures, etc.
CENTRAVIS portfolio has a unique project of tubes delivery for FLNG terminal construction for PETRONAS. Tubes for this project were manufactured of steel grade TP316L to guarantee tremendous strength even at extremely low temperatures.
“Features of the rig, – the limited space, high safety requirements, rigorous climate preclude from using traditional technological processes of natural gas liquefaction, and materials widely used onshore. It relates to application of dual mixed refrigerant to condense feed gas to a liquid at a temperature of -162 ° C, therefore, seamless stainless steel tubes are the best solution for such project – they are able to retain strength at extremely low temperatures and are resistant to salt water, high pressure and hydraulic loads during operations”, – is mentioned in the article.
Find more detailed information on technical aspects of tubes production for this project in the article of LNG Industry.
