A study on loading and offloading operability of FLBT

Abstract

In South Korea, a national R&D project for development of Floating LNG Bunkering Terminal(FLBT) has been carried out. FLBT has a 220,000m3 storage capacity, which will be installed at a target offshore site with the internal turret and catenary mooring lines. It receives Liquefied Natural Gas(LNG) from a 170K LNG carrier(LNGC) and unloads LNG to 30K or 5K LNG-Bunkering Shuttles (LNG-BSs) simultaneously, as they are moored side-by-side with mooring ropes and fenders. The relative motion responses between loading arms and corresponding manifolds are crucial for LNG transfer process, because almost all rigid LNG loading arms have their specified allowable displacement criteria. To investigate the multi-body interactions, model tests were conducted at the ocean engineering basin in KRISO. Head sea and head quartering sea conditions were considered in the model test, while the different conditions of wave direction were covered by numerical simulations. Also, numerical simulations were conducted with AQWA, a sub-module of ANSYS package. The hydrodynamic coefficients obtained from the model test were used for AQWA simulation as input data. Finally we judged the operable incident wave heading range under allowable displacement criteria. ？ 2019 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE).