Refers to the ship that specially transports liquefied natural gas. The earliest LNG carrier was the Methane Light Multi, which was transformed from an ordinary old oil tanker in the United States 1958. According to the structure of cargo oil tank, it can be divided into independent storage tank type and membrane type.
The former is to put cylindrical, pot-shaped and spherical tanks in the ship, while the latter adopts double-shell structure, and the inner shell is the load-bearing shell of the cargo hold. Compared with independent type, membrane type has the advantages of high volume utilization rate and light structure weight, so most newly-built LNG ships, especially large LNG ships, adopt membrane type structure, with complicated equipment, high technical requirements and high cost.
Development of LNG carriers
After 1980s, as Japan and South Korea became the first and second largest importers of LNG in the world, Japanese and South Korean shipyards successively introduced the construction technology and patents of independent tanks and membrane ships from European shipyards and LNG ship patent companies, and started to build LNG ships in the early 1980s and early 1990s respectively.
With the increase in the number of LNG ships built by Japanese and Korean shipyards, the share of LNG ships built by European and American shipyards in the LNG ship market is gradually decreasing. From 200 1 to 2006 10, 55 LNG ships were built by Korean shipyards, 28 by Japanese shipyards and the remaining 6 by European shipyards. Facts have proved that the LNG ship construction center has been transferred from Europe and America to Asia.