BG Group recently initiated a project, named Blue Amazon, aiming to rethink the LNG carrier’s design by developing a low-resistance hull from scratch.
Michael Davidson, BG Group’s project development manager for ship design and construction , who has been overseeing the project, said, “The idea was to achieve the highest level of efficiency by trying to improve upon the best designs currently being built at the shipyards that BG partners with.”
BG set out to independently develop an “ efficient ” hull form and general arrangement for an LNG ship, taking a new approach, not restricted to following the industry-standard shape and arrangement of the ship’s LNG cargo tank.
The process also considered how the design would affect vessel construction. A central concept of the project is to ensure that the new design is practical to build, reducing costs at the same time, BG said.
The Blue Amazon team conducted tests during an 18-month period which included building a scale model.
BG noted in its statement on Monday that the vessel design is expected to require less propulsion energy than the current designs, saving fuel and corresponding emissions by 3–5 percent.
Davison said, “Three to five percent savings may not sound much, but if you’ve got a large fleet of say 30, 40 ships, each burning around 80 tonnes of fuel a day, you can imagine the emissions and commercial advantage of such savings. Over a year, a fleet of such ships would be saving approximately 32,000 tonnes of LNG fuel.”
The design has been discussed with South Korean shipyards, seeking feedback, as the team moves into the final stage of optimization with final design optimizations.
The final design is expected to be revealed in March 2016.
BG Group cooperated on the project with Bureau Veritas, HydrOcean, GTT, Instituto de Pesquisas Tecnológicas (São Paulo) and Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
LNG World News Staff