John r. Snyder Publisher & Editor Editorial
jsnyder@sbpub.com
August 2000 Vol 105 No 8
editorial
Would you put your cigarette out in LNG?
W
ould you extinguish a cigarette in a canister of Liquefied Natural Gas? That’s just what Erik Neandross did during a highly entertaining and informative presentation called “LNG 101” at the recent HHP Summit 2012, a conference in Houston focusing on the use of natural gas for high horsepower applications in marine, rail, mine-hauling and E&P sectors. Neandross’ hour-and-a-half-long presentation—reminiscent of a Bill Nye, the Science Guy TV segment—was designed to provide attendees with a basic overview of the general properties of LNG, addressing many widely held misconceptions about its safety, particularly in view of the recent surge of the abundance of natural gas in the U.S. due to fracking and its consideration for use as a fuel in everything from rail locomotives to minehauling equipment to ships. As part of the demo, a normally flexible tyvek tube turned brittle after it was dipped into a beaker of LNG and a balloon full of methane—the major component of natural gas—was changed to LNG after pouring super-cooled LNG over top of the balloon. Natural gas liquefies when it is cooled to -260º F. Nicholas Blenkey Neandross is not some loose cannon. He’s the CEO of GladEditor stein, Neandross & Associates, a Santa Monica, Californiabased environmental consulting firm and the producer of the HHP Summit. After the demo, I approached Neandross and half-jokingly asked him if he might be interested in performing his presentation for the New York City Fire Department. He gracefully declined. The reason I posed the question was, of course, that the New York City Department of Transportation has received a $2.3 million federal grant to convert an Alice Austen Class ferry to burn natural gas. The Alice Austen Class ferries are the smallest in the city’s fleet, with passenger capacities of 1,200. The city is said to be considering using either Rolls-Royce’s natural gas engines or Wärtsilä’s dual fuel engines for the conversion. The LNG bunkering for the vessel would be reportedly handled
in New Jersey. The general public’s concern over the safety of LNG dates back almost 50 years to a fire at an LNG peakshaving facility on Staten Island, NY, in February 1973. According to a report from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), the accident, which killed 40 workers, was the central factor in the adoption of New York State’s current LNG moratorium in 1978. The workers were working inside the LNG tank when a spark from an unknown source ignited a flammable solvent, which in turn set fire to the tank’s mylar lining and polyurethane foam insulation. The fire created enough internal pressure to lift the cement roof off of the tank. Once the pressure was vented, the roof collapsed back into the tank. The workers were killed either by the collapsed roof or asphyxiated. The accident was the subject of a July 1973 House hearing at which testimony indicated that an analysis revealed nitrogen, freon 11, and oxygen, rather than LNG vapors, were absorbed in the tank insulation and contributed to the fire. The cause of the accident, however, was never conclusively determined. As part of our coverage in this issue, we talk about Washington State Department of Transportation’s issuance of an RFP to convert six existing car ferries to burn LNG, and, in our Update section, we highlight pioneering Harvey Gulf Marine International’s exercise of its options to build more dual fuel Platform Supply Vessels for the U.S. Gulf. HGIM could now potentially build up to ten of the groundbreaking vessels. One in ten newly built ships are expected to be delivered with gas-fuelled engines, according to a presentation by Tony Teo, of DNV North America, Maritime, at our recent Global Greenship Conference in Washington, DC. LNG-fuelled ferries will make up a core part of the agenda next month at our 26th annual FERRIES Conference, which is scheduled for Nov. 5-6 in Boston. I hope to see you there.
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