DSME has recently developed a new membrane type cargo containment system, SOLIDUS, and launched it to the LNG market. The system has double metallic membrane barriers to increase safety and adopted a newly developed reinforced polyurethane foam as insulation material. The integrity of the system in terms of ultimate strength has been proved by comparing the calculated minimum safety factors with the required values while the obtained minimum fatigue life of primary and secondary membranes has shown that the system has enough fatigue strength. The system's sloshing resistance has also been verified by the obtained utilization factors smaller than the requirement.
With the effort during the past few years together with its experience and technology in LNG industry, DSME recently has developed its new membrane type cargo containment system (CCS), SOLIDUS, and officially launched the new system into the LNG market claiming to a safe and economic membrane type CCS.
SOLIDUS is a market driven product following the demand of less cost and less boil off gas but higher safety. Those requests have been fulfilled by lowering the product loyalty, by employing the newly developed reinforced poly-urethane foam (R-PUF) of high performance and by utilizing the double independent metallic barriers, respectively.
In this paper, it is focused on the technical excellence of SOLIDUS by explaining the engineering works involved in the development of the system leaving behind the symbolical value it has brought into the LNG market.
SOLIDUS is a next-generation membrane type cargo containment system which consists of two layers of insulation panels (sandwich type made of plywood, R-PUF and plywood) and has double metallic barriers satisfying the International Gas Carrier (IGC) code. The primary membrane is 1.2 mm of SUS 304L and the secondary membrane is 0.7 mm of invar. Both membranes have corrugations to alleviate burdens from the thermal contraction due to cryogenic cargo. The insulation panels with primary of 100 mm and secondary of 300 mm thickness are installed to meet the market need for low Boil-Off Rate (BOR). An eco-friendly and high-performance insulation material, R-PUF, that has been developed in cooperation with the German chemical company, BASF, is utilized to lower BOR and satisfy strength requirements. The system is designed to be secured to inner hull via mastic bonding on the bottom of the secondary panel and a mechanical securing module is devised for securing of the primary panel with the secondary panel. The basic characteristics of the SOLIDUS system are shown in Fig. 1.
