Как Перевозят Газ По Морю

Maritime transportation of hydrocarbons is one of the most complex and high-tech industries in modern global shipping. The average person often assumes that transporting natural gas is as simple as loading it into a tanker and sending it across the ocean. However, the physical properties of methane completely preclude such a trivial approach. To transport this volatile substance aboard a ship, it must literally be converted into an icy liquid, cooling it to an extreme minus 162 degrees Celsius. Enormous modern tankers conceal gigantic sealed tanks, maintaining temperatures colder than the surfaces of some distant planets. During the deep cryogenic cooling process, methane is compressed almost 600 times, turning into a stable liquid capable of slowly sloshing around inside cargo holds amidst the turbulent ocean. The safety of such voyages requires absolute precision, as one serious error can turn a multi-billion-dollar, high-tech tanker into a massive disaster at sea. The historical development of cryogenic shipping has been fraught with risks and dangerous experiments. Humanity took the first fundamental steps in this direction back in the nineteenth century, when physicist Michael Faraday sealed gases in thick glass tubes, heating one end and artificially cooling the other, experiencing regular explosions from the enormous pressure. Later, in the late nineteenth century, Carl von Linde developed the first industrial method of liquefying gases, but the idea of ​​building a fully-fledged floating thermos long seemed crazy to contemporaries. A real breakthrough occurred in the mid-twentieth century, when the United States converted a naval vessel into the first gas carrier, the Methane Pioneer, with aluminum tanks and balsa wood insulation. In January 1909, this ship took on its first cargo of liquid methane in Louisiana and successfully delivered it to Great Britain through a violent ocean storm. Modern documentaries often focus on the detailed design of these engineering masterpieces, as a single modern liquefied gas carrier costs over two hundred and fifty million dollars, making it one of the most expensive civilian vessels on the planet. Two design technologies compete fiercely globally: the Moss-Rosenberg spherical system with robust, independent spheres on the deck, and the membrane system from GTT, where the tanks are completely concealed within the vessel's rectangular hull for maximum capacity. Engineers use a unique nickel-iron alloy called Invar in their membrane tanks, which exhibits virtually no contraction under extreme cold, while the thin membrane is reliably protected by a double layer of insulation and durable birch plywood boxes. A fascinating technical paradox is that a gas carrier is a unique vessel that uses its own boiling cargo as fuel for propulsion. External heat causes methane to slowly boil, creating dangerous overpressure, but engineers channeled this flammable vapor into ship boiler furnaces or modern dual-fuel internal combustion engines. The system's safety is ensured by double-walled gas pipes, the space between which is filled with nitrogen, and automatic sensors analyze the environment every thirty seconds, eliminating even the slightest leak. Even in critical situations of complete system shutdown, as happened in 2008 with the out-of-control tanker Catalunya Spirit near Boston, or the devastating impact of the gas carrier El Paso Paul Kaiser on the rocks of La Perla Reef in Gibraltar, the strength of the internal membrane tanks completely prevented fuel leakage and saved the waters from environmental disaster. The latest pinnacle of engineering has become the exploration of polar latitudes. In August 2017, the unique Arctic icebreaking gas carrier Christophe de Margerie completed a historic voyage along the Northern Sea Route, independently, without the assistance of icebreakers, delivering liquefied natural gas from the northern port of Sabetta to South Korea in a record fifteen days. Its high-strength steel hull and Azipod electric thrusters allow the vessel to move stern-first, crushing heavy ice packs over two meters thick with its massive steel propellers. The arrival of such a giant at any civilian port is a strictly regulated operation, with a closed safety zone of over three kilometers in radius declared, laser mooring sensors used, and automated loading arms used to pump the icy methane into ground-based storage tanks. Watch our new documentaries to learn how cutting-edge science and rigorous engineering calculations ensure the daily reliable delivery of energy around the globe.