From research...
In 1960, well before the first commercial delivery of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to France in 1965, Gaz de France set up an experimental Cryogenic Testing Station at Roche-Maurice, near Nantes. Today, we know it as CRIGEN (the Gas and New Energies Research and Innovation Center). Its mission was to demonstrate the feasibility of a French LNG production and value chain.
At that time, the facility worked on all the industrial processes involved in the LNG chain: liquefaction, transportation, regasification, etc. Its researches focused particularly on the development of technical materials, the behavior of LNG and safety at every link in the chain.
In order to carry out this work, the individual links in the chain were reproduced on a smaller scale. The facility had a 500 m³ tank, liquefaction and reclassification units, a testing area of 120,000 m² and extensive metrology and industrial IT resources.
It was thanks to Beauvais, France's first experimental LNG carrier, that the research center and shipbuilders were able to experiment at full scale on the equipment they had researched and designed before beginning work on building France's first LNG carrier, the Jules Verne.
… to experiments in LNG transportation onboard Beauvais
Gaz de France acquired Beauvais in July 1959. Originally an American liberty ship from the Second World War, she was to be its first experimental LNG carrier. In 1961, she was disarmed at Dunkerque before being repaired and converted at the Chantiers de l'Atlantique yard in Saint-Nazaire. By 1962, she was ready for her new duties, and was operated by La Compagnie Nantaise des Chargeurs de l'Ouest on behalf of Méthane Transport.
On May 15, 1962, Beauvais put to sea with her tanks full of LNG. The aim of the voyage was to put laboratory theories to the test, and compare experimental solutions under the real-life conditions onboard. The tanks, their insulation, their mountings and all the ancillary equipment (pumps, pipelines, valves and safety devices) were monitored in minute detail. On July 2, having returned to the River Loire, Beauvais landed her cargo at the Roche-Maurice Testing Station via a set of articulated arms.
From 1960 to today, the research has continued
By the time the Nantes Roche-Maurice Cryogenic Testing Station closed in 2002, more than a thousand research studies and tests had been conducted, many with foreign partners. What remained was an invaluable database, which has enabled researchers to develop software to control safety and simulate the behavior of LNG in storage and at sea.
Today, the LNG researchers at CRIGEN continue to improve operational performance throughout the LNG chain, and support the GDF SUEZ Group in its technological development of fuel LNG and delivered LNG.