Location:

First Installation:

Current Migration:

Industry:

http://www.yokogawa.com/suc/

SUCCESS STORY

Incheon, South Korea

1998

2011 (plant 1)

LNG Supply Chain

Executive Summary

Established by the Korean government in 1983, Korea Gas Corporation (KOGAS) is the world’s largest importer of LNG, and

the country’s sole importer of this important resource. KOGAS is fully committed to providing clean, safe, and convenient

energy to the people of Korea. The company currently operates LNG receiving terminals in Incheon, Pyeongtaek, and

Tongyeong, and distributes natural gas and gas by-products via a 2,739 km pipeline network to power plants, gas utility

companies, and city gas companies throughout the country.

The Incheon LNG terminal is the world’s largest LNG receiving complex, and it supplies natural gas to the Incheon and Seoul

metropolitan areas, which account for 40% of the country’s natural gas demand. Built on a 990,000 m

plot of reclaimed land

8.7 km off the coast, the terminal has two plants with a jetty capable of accommodating two ultra-large LNG carriers of up to

100,000 tons in size and a total of ten 100,000 m

above-ground storage tanks, two 140,000 m

underground tanks, and eight

200,000 m

underground tanks, giving it a total storage capacity of 2,880,000 m

(Kl). The total gas send out capacity of the

Incheon terminal is 4,350 tons per hour.

In 1996, Yokogawa Korea installed a CENTUM CS production control system at plant 1 of the Incheon terminal, and migrated

this system to CENTUM VP in 2011. With the construction by KOGAS of plant 2 in 2004, Yokogawa Korea installed a CENTUM

CS system, and subsequently installed another CENTUM CS 3000 system in 2009. Engineering work is now underway at

plant 2 for migration to CENTUM VP. The Incheon terminal utilizes Yokogawa’s CENTUM systems for the control and

monitoring of facilities throughout both plants, including unloading arms, storage tanks, recondensors, open rack vaporizers

(ORV), submerged combustion vaporizers (SMV), and trunk lines with metering stations.

World’s Largest LNG Terminal Relies on CENTUM to Maximize

Safety and Reliability

ISD-SP-R165

SUCCESS STORY

The Challenges and the Solutions

(1) Safe operation

At LNG receiving terminals, safety is a paramount concern with the transfer and storage of LNG from carriers. It is very

important to maintain a constant pressure inside the storage tanks, which requires careful control of the operation of

boil-off gas (BOG) compressors, recondensors, and pumps. By means of sequence functions, CENTUM operators can easily

control the process from a remote location, starting and stopping the BOG compressors depending on BOG temperature,

gas composition, and volume. In addition, KOGAS has a disaster protection system for dealing with critical situations, and

personnel in the central control room can share information in real time with operators in plants 1 and 2, ensuring a timely and

well coordinated response if fire or a gas leak is detected.

(2) Steady gas supply

It is very important for KOGAS to be able to adjust flexibly to shifts in demand in the gas that it supplies to power plants,

industrial companies, and residences. While seawater in an ORV is normally used to cool and vaporize the LNG, in periods

of peak demand operation can be automatically switched over to an SMV that relies on the combustion of BOG to vaporize

the LNG. Every aspect of these vaporization processes, from the switching on and off of pumps to the control of vaporization

temperature and gas pressure, is carefully configured in the CENTUM system. The adjustment to shifts in demand is fully

automated at this terminal, ensuring uninterrupted supply.

(3) Proactive maintenance for asset excellence

Systems from other vendors that control the plant’s offloading, tank gauging, pipe line monitoring, metering, and other

processes are all integrated via a Modbus interface with each plant’s CENTUM production control system. The data from

these processes is used to make production reports, calculate plant efficiency, and analyze performance. For example,

operators use an accumulated running time report to track how long each LNG pump, air compressor, and other rotating

equipment throughout the terminal has been operating. This enables a proactive approach to the scheduling of inspections

to determine when repair or replacement will be necessary. This puts the right information at the right time into the hands of

the right operators and managers, so they can make timely and correct decisions. The system can also generate the following

types of reports used by plant specialists to analyze overall performance of the LNG terminal as well as individual processes:

1. LNG cost analysis

2. Electric power consumption

3. Fuel gas consumption

4. Unit operation cost

5. Daily cost analysis

6. LNG unloading

7. BOG treatment

8. Odorant treatment

9. Running time accumulation

10. Yield accounting

CENTUM VP operator in central control room