Hanwha expands eco-friendly, value-added ship building with smart system

[Courtesy of Hanwha Ocean]

South Korean shipbuilding company Hanwha Ocean Co.’s Geoje Shipyard is being optimized for building eco-friendly, high-value-added ships such as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers and dual-fuel vessels. To cope with an increase in orders, Hanwha Ocean is digitizing the entire process from the block manufacturing to commissioning, which will enhance productivity and improve quality with technologies that improve the efficiency and safety of LNG cargo and fuel tanks.

On a large display board at Geoje Shipyard’s smart yard demonstration center located in Geoje City, South Gyeongsang Province, which Maeil Business Newspaper visited on Friday, a smart production system was set up to provide a bird’s eye view of the entire production process taking place at the 4.9 million-square-meter shipyard, which is 1.5 times the size of Yeouido in Seoul.

The system, which uses artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), and sensor technology, offers a view of not only the production progress by specific areas in the upstream and downstream processes, but also which workshops are overloaded. LNG carriers and LNG dual-fuel carriers under construction are also being built using the smart production system. “Previously, the person in charge had to check both the progress and processes via phone, which led to low efficiency,” Kwon Soon-do, head of the smart yard research team at Hanwha Ocean’s Geoje Shipyard, said. “Now, the work progress can be checked intuitively and responses can be made promptly on-site thanks to real-time data collection and simulations.”

Research on cargo tanks, the core of LNG carriers, is also being carried out. At the energy system demonstration center located just below the shipyard’s energy plant construction area, facilities for the verification of an LNG re-liquefaction system are said to have changed the standard for LNG carriers.

LNG in the cargo tank is vaporized during transportation, creating boil-off gas (BOG), which is collected and turned back into liquid gas by a re-liquefier. This process helps minimize LNG vaporization while preventing environmental pollution caused by carbon dioxide when BOG is released into the air or burned.

Research is also underway to minimize damage to cargo and fuel tanks caused by LNG sloshing. The Sloshing Research Center at Geoje Shipyard is equipped with two sloshing motion platforms as well as over 500 pressure sensors and data acquisition devices and is automated to operate around the clock unattended.