The World’s Largest Man-Made Floating Object
May 23rd, 2011Via: Popular Science:
Shell is making good on its promise to build the largest object ever to float on water, announcing Friday it would build the Prelude FLNG Project to harvest offshore natural gas fields. The gargantuan ship will suck up the equivalent of 110,000 barrels of oil per day.
The floating liquified natural gas facility will dwarf the biggest warships, weighing in at 600,000 metric tons. By contrast, the U.S.’ next-generation Ford-class supercarrier will displace 101,000 metric tons of water. Shell says its ship will be able to withstand a category 5 typhoon.
In 1975, the pre-stressed concrete Arco Ardjuna Sakti floating LPG terminal was built in Tacoma, WA by Concrete Technology, inc. It was 65,000 dead weight tons (loaded) and was the largest pre-stressed concrete vessel in the world at the time- and now they are talking about building something 10 times that big! That blows my mind having seen it every day during construction. It had two layers of 6 each heat treated, steel pressure vessels for storing liquified petroleum gas. There’s a photo of it in this excellent article on concrete barge building: http://www.nmri.go.jp/main/cooperation/ujnr/24ujnr_paper_us/Offshore_Structures_and_Systems/OSS_Berner_Gerwick.pdf
Here’s an article about it when it left Tacoma: http://www.abam.com/sites/default/files/uploadedfiles/tp-World%27sLargestPrestressedLPGVessel.pdf
It was in service in the Java sea until 2005 when it was pulled out of service due to corrosion degradation of the steel piping throughout the vessel.