En studie kring applikationer av aerogelmaterial i naturgastankers

Abstract

Today natural gas is an industry in rapid expansion. The coming decades the consumption of natural gas will increase by as much as 60% until year 2035. This increase in consumption will result in large shipping volumes. Shipping natural gas is problematic in the sense that it is transported at very low temperatures. Other problems can be corrosion from seawater and mechanical stresses from sea voyages. This poses some challenges for both materials and processes. The use of aerogel materials could be beneficial to solving these challenges compared to the default materials used today. The study is based around the following question; can aerogel materials be used on natural gas tankers and how do they cope with the conventionally used materials? The purpose of this study is to determine if aerogel materials can be used for insulation and seals in pipe systems onboard natural gas tankers. This was evaluated by studying relevant literature and publications in order to investigate the properties of aerogel and conventionally used materials. The result was presented as a comparison between conventional materials and aerogel materials. When insulation was investigated, silica aerogel blanket insulation was compared to polyurethane foams. The blanket material did have a lower heat transfer coefficient and had the advantage of being more resilient to mechanical stresses. When the seal was investigated a vanadium aerogel was compared to PTFE (Teflon). The most important factor in seals is the ability to maintain elasticity despite the low temperatures. In both cases the materials had a sufficient elasticity at cryogenic temperatures. The study has found that aerogel materials definitely have a potential to replace conventional materials in the investigated applications.