Recently, TISCO launched a new GTT-approved stainless steel product which is dedicated for the membrane containment system of MARK-III type LNG ship/tank, marking the company the first in China and the third globally qualified supplier of the special metal. It solves basic material problem that throttling the LNG seaborne and storage industry of China.

LNG is publicly known as the cleanest fossil energy on the earth, citing easy storage and transport, and low pollution. The growing international trade of LNG has led to greater demands of big ships for LNG transportation and big land tanks for LNG storage. LNG can only be handled under -162 Celsius degree, which raises strict requirement to the basic material used for manufacturing LNG equipment.

MARK-III type ships and membrane type land tanks, featuring with high safety coefficient and large storage capacity, represent the main stream in LNG industry. They are manufactured with a very kind of special austenite stainless steel CR sheets that are stringently controlled in terms of microstructure stability, mechanical properties at extreme low temperature, dimension accuracy, flatness, and “defect-free” surface quality. All those strict requirements have made the material very difficult to produce. Therefore, for a very long time, the manufacturing technology and production qualification used to be mastered by several steel producers out of China.

In response to the nation’s needs, TISCO set up a technical team who made concrete effort for two years on every technical issue and made the product get approved by GTT in all critical indexes including flatness, surface quality, low temperature performance, and etc. The certificates issued by GTT, adding to all the other certificates TISCO had obtained, has made the company a qualified domestic supplier of the material for membrane type LNG ship/tank, as well as an essential supporter of Chinese LNG ship/tank sector.