LNG - Liquified Natural Gas

LNG Abalamabie

Prices to hire an LNG carrier ship have reached new heights. It now costs $350,000 a day to hire one of these ships. Evidently, it's worthwhile proposition because even after paying the shipping costs, the gas can still be sold at a profit in Asia.

Nostromo

LNG carriers remind me of the Nostromo, the cargo ship from the first Alien movie. Giant, high-tech ship with just a handful of people on board. If they weren't such mundane, everyday things, it would make a great setting for a science fiction thriller. Of course, I doubt anyone in their right mind would allow a crew of film makers on board one of these ships. That just sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Anyway, I'm reading along and I come across this phrase: "modern two-stroke LNG carriers" and I wonder what the heck is that? They have some new technique for compressing gas? No, it's just engine basics. Some engines (automobiles for instance) are four stroke and some engines (chainsaws, go karts) are two stroke. Likewise some diesel engines are four stroke, like Caterpillar, and some are two stroke, like Detroit Diesel.

This might be the Suehiro Maru No. 8*

I got this from a pdf from MAN Diesel and Turbo. I'm reading along and I come across this bit:

The first LNG carrier was the 150 m3 forerunner Suehiro Maru No. 8 from 1962 (scrapped 1983) with a four-stroke diesel engine as prime mover.

The capacity of the LNG Abalamabie (shown at the top) at 170,000 cubic meters is over one thousand times greater than the Suehiro Maru's capacity of 150 cubic meters.

*Turns out there is more than one Suehiro Maru No. 8. I couldn't find any pictures from the correct era. This picture supposedly came from a YouTube video, but it's not actually in there. It looks old, and it only exists as search result, so it's like a ghost picture, which is kind of appropriate for a ghost ship.

P.S. Just out of curiousity, I checked my browser's history. Putting this post together took about an hour and generated 150 entries in the history log visiting maybe 75 different pages.