Risk management framework of LNG offshore transfer and delivery system

Abstract

The leakage of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is susceptible to chain accidents such as fire and explosion, threating the safety of LNG vessels. This paper proposes a risk management framework for LNG offshore transfer and delivery system, which is a critical assembly of LNG offshore operation. The components and the workflow of the system are addressed. Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is implemented to identify potential failure modes, failure causes and final effects of the system in the accident of leakage. According to the risk identification results, typical failure scenarios are established to explore the impact of different factors, including environmental parameters and the layout of ships. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method is introduced to solve the model, achieving the characteristics of the LNG vapor leakage risk. Based on the leakage risk assessment, the optimized risk control options (RCOs) are determined. The results indicate that the proposed framework can be applied to analyze different risk scenarios and propose controls to improve the security of the system.