Despite efforts to bring these shipments to market, none have yet been sold. They are currently stored in floating storage facilities near Murmansk and Kamchatka.

How are the ships keeping the LNG in liquid state? Its cryogenic gas which means keeping it cold to keep it in liquid form. Are they simply offgassing the boil off, or are there re-freezers build into the ships to cool the boil off back to liquid?

[–] supercriticalcheese@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Thermodynamics, heat in causes boil off but that takes massive energy to vaporise everything, and it is limited thanks to the good insulation.

Boil off is never vented, it powers the engines. They can also reliquify for some ships at least.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Decent LNG tanks seems to have a boil off of about 0.05% of max volume per day. So after some 3 years (1000 days), your tank would be half empty. But I'd wager the rates are a lot higher in ships, since they have some weight and space restrictions you don't get on land.

Use some to power the engines, put the rest through a recondenser? There's probably a financial optimum there somewhere.

[–] supercriticalcheese@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes but they can get quite close to that. And voyages don't last that long.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That's a fair point. Imagine the cost just having a whole ass ship shitting there, doing literally nothing.

[–] supercriticalcheese@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

That would be wasting money, ships are expensive to charter.

Whoever operates them have every interest to have them moving about.