Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world’s largest shipbuilder, has completed initial development of its own floating liquefied natural gas plant (FLNG) model with partner Linde AG.  The ship will act as a floating platform for producing liquefied natural gas with a production capacity of 2.5 million tons of LNG and storage for 193,800 square meters of LNG on its 355 meter length and 70 meter width.

This ship compares to the similar Royal Dutch Shell FLNG platform which will have a capacity of 3.6 million tons on a much larger platform while a smaller PETRONAS FLNG platform will have a capacity of 1 million tons/year.

The Hyundai FLNG is a design that will appear at about the time the Shell system is also ready for business.  An FLNG platform receives natural gas from a floating drilling platform, either as the platform’s major production or (more likely) as a side production from the drilling platform’s oil production.  The received naturla gas is then liquefied by the FLNG and offloaded to an LNG carrier.

Most of Hyundai’s research and development thus far has been into safety evaluations of the floating platform (which has received approval-in-principle from Norway’s DNV) and in the conversion process itself as it applies to mobile units.

The advantages of a ship-based platform are many.  First, the FLNG requires less time to build compared to an onshore, fixed facility (about 25% less time) and can be moved to new locations when a well runs dry or goes offline for any reason.  It would also enable petroleum companies to capture natural gas that is often burnt off and wasted as capturing, transporting, and refining the gas from a floating rig is expensive.

Hyundai began investigating the idea of an FLNG several years ago as the increase in demand for natural gas grew.

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