December 08th 2009, destination to the third Factory Study Tour(FST)’s place: Tokyo Gas LNG Terminal which is located in Sodegaura, Chiba. It was a nice trip because we passed Tokyo Bay by using underwater road. After 1.5 hour trip, we arrived there. Unsurprisingly when people say that this LNG terminal is the biggest in the world: yes it is absolutely huge! This terminal was built in 1973 and started to receive Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from many countries such as Qatar, Alaska, Australia, Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
What is LNG? The extension has been mentioned above and it is quite clear from it: gas that is transformed becomes liquid phase. This is just phase change by changing its temperature from room temperature to around -162oC. Gas is a very free phase, it is hard to purify, carry, and transport it. If it is liquefied, it will be easier to do those. Now LNG is commonly used as energy source because its cleanliness in combustion. LNG consists most of methane gas (CH4) and others (NOx and CO2) in small numbers (compared to petroleum and coal as energy source). NOx and CO2 gas can be described as impurities that must be removed in liquefaction because they can decrease amount of energy results from LNG’s combustion. NOx and CO2 gas may also contribute in acid rain if their form become oxidized and play role in water pollution.
Here is the brief description about what they do there: they receive raw LNG from supplier country, then store in suitable LNG tank (each of this tank named by the country which supply the LNG) and dehydrate it. By complicated process then impurities are separated from methane. Some of the separated ones such as H2, N2, and O2 gas can be liquefied and used as fuel cell or cryogenic energy to gain electric energy. Carbon atom from the impurity also can be produced by breaking its molecule structure and used for research purpose in making artificial diamond or in radioisotope form, 14C-urea, can be utilized for Helicobacter pylori bacteria detection in human gastric (breath test) that cause peptic ulcer disease.
In pure form, then LNG can be liquefied and stored well. If it will be sent to consumers, then this liquid has to be gasified by heating it with hot seawater. After it turns to be gas phase again, this LNG can be pushed into long connecting pipe where the destination is consumer. Before it is transported, LNG has to be odorized by merkaptan gas so that if there is a leak in the pipe, it can be easily detected (natural LNG has no smell).
After we were told about those, we were shown how cold is LNG and its dangerous effect to many materials. Thermometer that used to detect temperature of LNG just could not measure it correctly because LNG’s temperature is very low; on the other hand the limit detection was only -80oC. With this coldness, it can also affect material characteristics. In a very low temperature, kinetics energy (that related to atom interaction) is also low, that is why when the material was soaked into LNG, it became very stiff and fragile (they showed us that even flexible ball could be broken after the soaking).
The performance was ended then we travelled around the company: we saw huge LNG tankers, big LNG tanks, and large pipes around it. The final session was question and answer with the junior and senior engineers. Finally around 17.00 we finished our FST and enjoyed the very nice return trip.
For more and better informations, please visit http://www.tokyo-gas.co.jp/index_e.html.
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