Accepted Manuscript

An Approach to Estimating the Boil-Off Rate of LNG in Type C Independent

Tank for Floating Storage and Regasification Unit under Different FillingRatio

Yan Lin, Chao Ye, Yan-yun Yu, Shi-wei Bi

PII: S1359-4311(17)37181-8
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2018.02.066
Reference: ATE 11848

To appear in: Applied Thermal Engineering

Received Date: 8 November 2017

Revised Date: 21 January 2018
Accepted Date: 18 February 2018

Please cite this article as: Y. Lin, C. Ye, Y-y. Yu, S-w. Bi, An Approach to Estimating the Boil-Off Rate of LNG
in Type C Independent Tank for Floating Storage and Regasification Unit under Different FillingRatio, Applied
Thermal Engineering (2018), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2018.02.066

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An Approach to Estimating the Boil-Off Rate of LNG
in Type C Independent Tank for Floating Storage and
Regasification Unit under Different Filling Ratio
Yan Lin*1,2, Chao Ye1, Yan-yun Yu1, Shi-wei Bi1
1
School of Naval Architecture, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
2
State Key Laboratory of Structural Analysis for Industrial Equipment, Dalian

ABSTRACT

The alternative terminal Floating Storage and Regasification Unit (FSRU) for gas storage and vaporization is rapidly
expanding all over the world. FSRU with great storage capacity and long storage time is faced with the continually
evaporation of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which result in the decrease of filling ratio. In order to improving the
efficiency of electricity generation and utilization of the Boil-off Gas (BOG), accurate and efficient method to estimate
the BOR under different filling ratio is in demand. An equivalent conductive model with the combination of adjacent fluid
layer and flowing BOG is proposed in this paper to handle the complex convection from the multiphase simulation.
Testified by experimental measurement, the highest relative error for BOR estimation is less than 4%, and also the heat
transferred by evaporation can be estimated accurately under different filling ratio. With the valid temperature distribution
got from this model, the initial condition of transient simulation under specific filling ratio can be given rapidly for
further study. Furthermore, the comparison between numerical results and experimental measurement also reveals that the
majority of heat is transferred from bulkhead during evaporation under lower filling ratio. Finally, the proposed approach
is successfully applied for a case of 30000 m3 FSRU, and proved to be a valid option to calculate BOR in the engineering
field.

Keywords: BOR, LNG, BOG, filling ratio, FSRU

1. Introduction
The demand of natural gas (NG) is growing because of its clean burning and extensive application value, and the
scale of NG trade volumes has reached an all-time high again [1-4]. In order to reduce the economic cost and mitigate the
demand pressure of land area, an alternative terminal Floating Storage and Regasification Unit (FSRU), similar to a
land-based terminal, is more and more widely utilized around the world [5, 6]. It can be treated as an offshore power
station with the ability of transporting liquefied natural gas (LNG), vaporizing LNG and delivering NG through specially
designed offshore or near-shore receiving facilities. Owing to the great temperature difference between LNG and the
ambient as well as the inherent defects of insulation wall [7], the evaporation of LNG is a regular and routine condition
during its service period and the corresponding LNG operations. The evaporating gas (boil-off gas, BOG) is the main
products in relation to the electricity generation, and the evaporating rate (boil-off rate, BOR) determines the efficiency of
regasification and electricity generation. Therefore, estimating the BOR accurately can facilitate the utilization of BOG
and improve the economic benefits of FSRU. Nonetheless, the filling level of LNG tank gradually declines during the
long storage time, which is even less than 30%, and the BOR under different filling ratio becomes an uncertainty in this
condition. As the multiphase flows are complicated and divergent for different filling ratio, accurately estimation of the
BOR under different filling ratio becomes an important task [8].
 Lots of researches in relation to BOR calculation for different kinds of LNG tank in the condition of full load have
been carried out [9-11]. In general, the method of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is preferred by researchers
[12-15]. The complicated physical phenomena, such as multi-phase flow and multiple gas species, in the evaporation of
LNG was taken into consideration in Lee’s work [16], and more practical results were got. Recktenwald et al [17] used
the three node model for a complicated shaped compressor, together with the finite-difference method, and investigated
the instantaneous heat transfer between the cylinder wall and gas. Shen et al [18] used 3-D FEM to analyze the cylinder
temperature distribution in boil-off gas (BOG) compressors, and further improved the precision by Finite Element
Method (FEM). However, only a few studies about the non-full load sate have been carried out. Kang et al. studied the
non-full loaded condition by using the model of thermal stratification [19]. Nonetheless, the thermal stratification is not
obvious in the tank as the BOG is continuously supplied to combustor in the FSRU, which shows the limitation of this
kind of model. (Reviewer 1, comment 1) Furthermore, as the complex multiphase convection and multicomponent fluid
limit the time step for convergence, the computation cost will increase exponentially due to the large number of grids.
Miana et al. [10] compared four different approaches which were used for calculating the BOR of Mark III tanks to
improve the efficiency of simulations, and proved that the simplification of the iteration can improve the computation
efficiency. Nevertheless, the computation cost was still massive with 3-D models due to the detailed numerical
simulations of fluid motion and heat-transfer. A practical approach that can efficiently simulate the heat-transfer and
temperature distribution of the cryogenic tank under non-full loaded condition is still in demand. Considering that the
FSRU is generally moored in a certain position, the sloshing effect is neglected in this study. (Reviewer 2, comment 3)

The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 describes the theory of the proposed approach used for calculating the
BOR of LNG; Section 3 defines the experimental setup; Section 4 utilizes the experimental measurements to verify the
approach solved by FEM and summarizes the characteristics observed from the results; After that, a case study of 30000
m3 FSRU is given in section 5 for further verification. Finally, main conclusions are given in section 6.

2. Theory of the equivalent conductive model

2.1. Thermal analysis of the cryogenic tank system

A typical system of a type C independent tank used for holding LNG or other cryogenic liquid consists of bulkhead,
insulation barrier, piping system and saddles as depicted in Fig. 1. Heat could be transferred from the air to the LNG
through these parts due to temperature difference, and the governing equation is given by:

(1)

where ρ is the reference density, c is the specific heat capacity, q’ is the heat source, T is the reference temperature and k is
the thermal conductivity.

Insulation wall Surface A

Adjacent fluid layer

BOG

Surface B
LNG

Surface C

Fig. 1. Sketch of type C independent cryogenic tank Fig. 2. Schematic of equivalent conductive model

The thermal boundary condition for surfaces in the case of full load can be determined by:
 (Reviewer 1, comment 2) (2)

where n refers to the normal direction of outer surface of insulation wall (Reviewer 2, comment 4), Tinner is the
temperature of inner surface of bulkhead, Touter is the temperature of outer surface of insulation barrier, Tair is the
temperature of the air which flows along the outer surface of insulation barrier, TLNG is assumed to be the temperature of
LNG after the evaporation gradually entering the quasi-steady-state, h is the convective coefficient of heat transfer
between air and insulation barrier, which corresponds to the average Nusselt number as [20]:

(3)

where Nu is the Nusselt number, Re is the Reynolds number, Pr is the Prandtl number and the L is the characteristic
length.

When a tank holds LNG for a relatively long time as a moored FSRU or a bunker, filling ratio of the tank could be
any value between 100% and 0%. During the evaporation of LNG, the BOG gradually fills the upper space of tank, and
the heat-transfer system typically involves two kinds of flowing fluids (air and BOG) separated by two solid walls. Thus,
heat is first transferred from the hot fluid to the insulation barrier by means of convection, through the barrier and the
bulkhead by conduction, and from the bulkhead to the cold BOG again by convection. The heat convection between BOG
and bulkhead under different filling ratio is accompanied with the gas temperature variation and the moving heat-transfer
interface. While the convective heat-transfer strongly depends on the velocity of fluid, it is difficult to determine without
a precise initial temperature distribution. Furthermore, as the real-scale of LNG carrier is large and the analysis of fluid
mechanics needs small time-step for convergence, the calculation process from full load to lower filling ratio is hard to
realize by numerical simulation.

In order to improve the computational efficiency, the equivalent conductive model that overcomes the difficulties of
dealing with the simulation of complex convection behavior is proposed, as illustrated in Fig. 2. Compared to
conventional CFD approaches, fluid behavior is not considered by fluid mechanics in this model, which decreases the
number of governing equations (Reviewer 2, comment 2). Heat-transfer through the adjacent fluid layer near bulkhead
could be regarded as a conduction process because of the no-slip condition and no-temperature-jump condition [21].
Therefore, the adjacent fluid layer with ultrathin thickness is treated as a model with thermal conductivity of BOG (kadj).
It is also suitable for the adjacent fluid layer between BOG and LNG (surface B), as the sloshing effect is ignored.
Meanwhile, the convection of BOG is considered to be strong enough with almost unchanged temperature in the direction
of heat transfer, which is similar as turbulent flow (Reviewer 1, comment 3). The heat is assumed to be transferred by a
higher equivalent thermal conductivity (kconv), referring to the concept of overall heat-transfer coefficient [21], the
relationship between k conv and the heat can be illustrated in Eq. (4). Noting that the value of ∂T/∂n is close to zero in the
zone of flowing BOG, the derivative of qA (or qB) with varying kconv should be approximately equal to zero as well. Then
kconv could be defined after discussing the relationship between k conv and the heat transferred by evaporation (Reviewer 1,
comment 3).

(Reviewer 1, comment 4; Reviewer 2, comment 4) (4)

where the subscript of adj stands for the temperature of adjacent fluid layer near bulkhead and the others stand for
parameters of different surface.

Based on the above analysis, heat absorbed by evaporation could be estimated by the equivalent conductive model,
the BOR can be obtained by Eq. (5), and the precision of this model is testified by a LN 2 experiment in the Chapter 3.To

3
assess the valid of the proposed method, α is utilized to analyze the difference between experiment and numerical model,
which is defined in Eq. (6). If the equivalent thermal conductivity kconv is valid for the system, α is tend to be 1.

(5)

(6)

where ρ is the density of cryogenic liquid, Hν is the enthalpy of vaporization of cryogenic liquid, V is the capacity of the
cryogenic tank, Qequivalent represents the heat transferred by equivalent conductive model of flowing BOG, Qconvenction
stands for the convective heat caused by real fluid and Qexperiment is the experimental measurement of heat absorbed during
the evaporation.

2.2. FEM model mesh and the material properties of the tank system

To study the temperature field under different filling ratio, the finite element method (FEM) discretizes the whole
system into finite constant elements and derives a global solution based on the solutions of all the elements. Considering
the symmetry of the tank, a semi-cylinder was analyzed to better observe the temperature distribution and reduce
computation time. Furthermore, to refine the finite element mesh, some tiny structures that have negligible influence on
the temperature field of the cylinder are diminished.

The FEM model based on 1.5 m3 experimental tank mentioned below is illustrated in Fig. 3 (a). As the body inside
standing for BOG is meshed with finer grid, the outermost layer of elements is set as adjacent fluid layer. Taking filling
ratio of 50% for instance, there are 121500, 215424 and 515808 elements meshed respectively by mapping method to
study the mesh independence. The difference between the calculated values using different grid size is represented with
root-mean-square values [22] of the calculated temperatures at specific locations. The results with difference less than 4.5
× 10-3 show that the solution is independent of the grid size.

(a) Model with 121,500 elements (b) Model with 215,424 elements (c) Model with 515,808 elements
Fig. 3. The FEM model based on experimental tank and independence study

The solid wall including steel bulkhead, saddle and insulation barrier were made from 9% nickel steel, wood and
polyurethane respectively and the properties of these materials are listed in Table 1. The operating conditions are the same
as the experiment described below.

Table 1 Thermal property of materials for experimental tank [23]

Temperature Conductivity k Specific heat cp Density ρ
Item
(℃) (W/(m∙K)) (J/(kg∙K)) (kg/m3)
-203 7.51
-183 8.72
Bulkhead -123 10.95 499 7,850
-73 11.96
20 14.03
Insulation barrier - 0.023 28 45
4
 Saddle - 0.40 1,720 1,100

The elements standing for adjacent fluid layer are given attributes as “nitrogen” (Table 2). Meanwhile, the
relationship between k conv and total heat transferred by evaporation is discussed by varying kconv in a wide range, as
depicted in Fig. 4. It is shown in Fig. 4 that the variation of kconv can make little impact on heat-transfer under different
filling ratio when the value of kconv exceeds and includes the critical value. Therefore, the value of kconv can be set as the
critical value according to Eq. (4) (Reviewer 1, comment 3).

Table 2 Thermal properties of nitrogen [24]

Item Temperature (℃) Conductivity k (W/(m∙K)) Specific heat cp (J/(kg∙K)) Density ρ (kg/m3)
-173 0.009
-123 0.014
Nitrogen 1,038 1.250
-73 0.018
27 0.026

136
Critical Value
134
60%
132
Total heat/W

130 50%

128 40%

126 30%

124

122
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
kconv

Fig. 4. Heat-transfer conditions with varying kconv under different filling ratio

3. Experimental setup
In order to test the validity of the estimation approach hereinbefore, laboratory scale experiments have been
performed using liquid nitrogen (LN2) which is usually used as a safer analogue of LNG [25]. The investigations can be
extended to LNG in the following research.

The experimental setup (Fig. 5) consists of a 9% nickel steel tank with a volume of 1.5 m3 and the LN2 injected in it.
The tank is shaped by a cylinder with two hemi-ellipsoids welded on both ends, and its dimensions are listed in Table 3.
The whole tank including saddles is covered by insulation wall (polyurethane).

Table 3 Dimensions of the experimental tank

Average thickness Average thickness Average thickness Minor axis Major axis
Item Length
of Insulation barrier of bulkhead of Saddles semidiameter semidiameter
Scale (mm) 400 10 50 1500 300 500

5
 (a) Tank Insulation Barrier (b) (c)
Minor axis
semidiameter

Length

Major axis
semidiameter

Saddle

Fig. 5. (a) Tank layout; (b) Bare tank; (c) Tank with insulation

The sloshing effect is neglected in this experiment since the tank is fixed in the laboratory (Reviewer 2, comment 3).
The mass loss of LN2 during the experiment is recorded at a frequency of 1 Hz, and the mass measurement precision is
0.1 kg. The temperature of the surroundings, specific locations of insulation wall and gas phase in tank are measured
using temperature sensors (Fig. 6 (a) ~(c)). One type of temperature sensor in Fig. 6 (b) is embedded in the insulation
wall to measure the temperature field of insulation wall, and the other in Fig. 6 (c) is fixed on the inner surface of
bulkhead to measure the temperature of BOG. What’s more, the internal pressure of tank is monitored by a pressure
sensor (Fig. 6 (d)) arranged at the vent. The temperature sensors and weighbridge are connected to the data acquisition
system on two PCs. Wind is generated in front of the tank using an air conditioner, with the ability to produce wind
speeds in the range of 1.5 ~ 3 m/s referring to the product manufacture, and the controllable and stable airflow is well
simulated. In addition, the tank is placed in a closed room which is especially applied to isolate the tank from natural
wind.
A

(a) A-A P1 T4
T5
T3

T2
T6

T1 T1
A

(b) (c) (d)

Fig. 6. (a) The arrangement of monitor points for sensors; (b) Embedded temperature sensor; (c) Inserted temperature
senor; (d) pressure sensor
The tank is 98 percent filled with liquid nitrogen. After filling is completed, it takes a couple of days for the tank
boil-off to stabilize. In order to collect more data under different filling ratio the test is conducted firstly in the condition
of holding BOG without releasing [19]. Otherwise, BOR could be more than 10% in the early days, which will result in
the initial filling ratio of quasi-steady-state even lower than 60% (Reviewer 3, comment 2). After releasing the BOG and
reaching to stable state, the sampling stage corresponding to the filling ratio from 60% to 30% was extracted from the
whole dataset under the temperature of T1 of -196 ℃ and the pressure of P1 of 0 kPa respectively (Fig. 7), and the filling
ratio versus time in sampling stage is calculated as:
6
 (7)

where Mm is the real-time weight measured by experiment, Me is the weight of empty tank and Ms is the capacity of tank.
Also, we can get BORexperiment as:

(8)

300 -178 1000

-180
250 900
-182
200 -184 800

Mm-Me/kg
-186
P1/kPa

Sampling stage Sampling stage 700

Sampling stage

T1/℃
150
-188
600
100 -190
-192 500
50
-194
400
0 -196
-198 300
0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250
Time/h Time/h Time/h

(a) Pressure from P1 versus time (b) Temperature from T1 versus time (c) Mass of LN2 versus time
Fig. 7. Experimental data of LN 2 evaporation (Reviewer 2, comment 5)

4. Results and discussion

During the steady evaporation of LN2, the relationship between remaining weight and time in sampling stage is
plotted in Fig. 8. A quadratic polynomial is used for regression, with the coefficient of determination of 0.997, which
shows a good agreement. The expression of dMm/dt could be obtained from polynomial and integrated into Eq. (5) as:

(9)

where x is the time measured by hour.

2850
Mm/kg
2800

2750
Mm/kg

2700 R2=0.997

2650

2600

2550

2500
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
x/h

Fig. 8. The relationship between remaining weight and time for sampling stage

Referring to the equivalent conductive model, the numerical result of BOR (BORnumerical) for LN2 can be obtained by
FEM as:

(10)

where Vnumerical is equal to the capacity of experimental tank, ρLN2 and Hv(LN2) are properties of LN2 as listed in Table 4.

7
 Table 4 Thermal properties of LN2
Item Enthalpy of vaporization (kJ/kg) Density (kg/m3)
LN2 198.6 808.3

Meanwhile, kconv is set to be equal as the conductivity of nitrogen, to find out how much enhancement of
heat-transfer through BOG as a result of convection, and the BOR of the imaginary pure conduction (BORconduction) is
studied (Reviewer 3, comment 1). For the purpose of comparison, all the three kinds of results are listed in Table 5 by the
interval of 5% of filling ratio. It can be seen from Table 5 that the maximum relative difference between BORexperiment and
BORnumerical is around 3.82%, which implies the BOR got from conductive model has a good agreement with experimental
result. As the filling level is dropping, the difference between BORexperiment and BORnumerical is reducing and the value of α
is closer to 1. Thus the equivalent conductive model shows a great applicability of determining BOR, especially under
lower filling ratio. What’s more, less than 1/10 of heat is transferred from BOG convection by comparing BORconduction
with BORexperiment, proving that the conduction accounts for the vast majority of heat-transfer. This phenomenon is also
more remarkable with lower filling ratio.
Table 5 Comparison of three kinds of BOR results
R (%) BORexperiment (%) BORnumerical (%) ΔQ caused by convection (W) α BORconduction (%)
60% 4.97 4.78 5.30 1.094 4.64
55% 4.88 4.70 5.02 1.088 4.58
50% 4.78 4.63 4.18 1.073 4.54
45% 4.69 4.56 3.62 1.063 4.47
40% 4.61 4.50 3.07 1.052 4.44
35% 4.51 4.45 1.67 1.028 4.41
30% 4.43 4.41 0.56 1.009 4.31

Fig. 9 illustrates the temperature contours for the whole tank. As the level of free surface drops, the variation of
BOG proportion yields a slight evolution of temperature distribution with the present contour legend. In addition, the
temperature data of the nodes in the same position of temperature sensors is acquired respectively for further comparison
with experimental data (Fig. 10 (a)) (Reviewer 3, comment 3). It can be seen from Fig. 10 (a) that the temperature
distribution of numerical simulation agrees well with the experimental results as depicted in Fig.10. The maximum
relative difference between numerical result and measurement is lower than 5%, which appears in the results of T2 and
are specially displayed in Fig. 10 (b) with more details of difference. As T2 is arranged near the free surface of 50%
filling ratio, the temperature tested should be affected by the phenomenon of rollover [26]. Moreover, noting that T3 is
the embedded (a)sensor used for measuring the temperature of BOG, (b) the result is varying from about -166 ℃ to -144 ℃ with
the difference less than 20 ℃. Although the filling ratio was changing from 60% to 30%, the free surface of LN2 drops
only 230 mm. Thus, the BOG covered with steel bulkhead which possesses high thermal conductivity could be easily
affected and cooled by remaining LN2, which leads to the almost unchanged temperature of BOG (Reviewer 3, comment
4). When filling ratio varying from 50% to 40%, free surface is floating up and down, increasing the deviation between
numerical results and experimental results. This phenomenon shall be considered in the future work for further
amendment. The sampling stage is limited between 60% and 30% due to the less capacity of tank. Maybe more data can
be got by refueling for higher filling ratio after stabilization of evaporation in the future work.

8 (d)
(c)
 Fig. 9. Temperature distribution for numerical model: (a) R=60%; (b) R=50%; (c) R=40%; (d) R=30%;
-40 -170
ER
-60 NR ER
T4:
-175 NR
-80
T6:
Temperature/℃

Temperature/℃
-100 -180

-120
-185
-140 T3:
-190
-160
T2:
-180 T5: -195
-200 T1:
-200
30 35 40 45 50 55 60 30 35 40 45 50 55 60
Filling ratio/% Filling ratio/%

(a) Temperature results of all sensors (b) Temperature results of T2

Fig. 10 Comparison between experimental results (ER) and numerical results (NR)

5. Case study
A 30000 m3 FSRU (Fig. 11) moored alone the shore is analyzed in this paper, and two kinds of type C cargo tank of
the FSRU are studied, whose scales are listed in Table 8. Test of BOR has been conducted by CNOOC. The reference
conditions are shown in Table 6, and the duration of test was a period of 24 hours. Before the test, the tank has been
completely cooled down to operating temperature and the tank pressure is maintained nearly constant. The average filling
levels are about 80% and 85% respectively (Table 7) during the test. It’s assumed that the BOG of this case is almost
composed of methane for the test conditions [27]. Finally, BOR was measured by volumetric change rate as listed in
Table 8.

Tank 2
Tank 1

Fig. 11. Arrangement of 30000 m3 FSRU

9
 r1
r2
l4

l1 l2
l3

r1

d1 d2

Fig. 12. Sketch of two types of tanks without insulation

Table 6 Dimensions of two type C tanks without insulation
Item Value (mm) Item Value (mm)
r1 7375 r2 7375
l1 18990 l2 15540
d1 10050 d2 10650
l3 18280
l4 3966

(a) (b)

Fig. 13. (a) The FEM model of Tank 1; (b) The FEM model of Tank 2
Table 7 Reference conditions of test
Item Tank 1 Tank 2
Hold space temperature 38.5 ℃
Tank pressure 1.013 bar
LNG temperature -160.7 ℃
LNG density 446.9 kg/m3
Enthalpy of vaporization 520.7 kJ/kg
Average filling level 79.65% 85.75%
Thermal conductivity of insulation About 0.04 W/(m∙K)
Thermal conductivity of adjacent fluid layer (kadj) 0.01 ~ 0.02 W/(m∙K)

It is shown in Fig.3 that the numerical models of tanks are built through the proposed approach, with the boundary
conditions given in Table 7. The temperature distribution of the two types of tanks is depicted in Fig. 14 (Reviewer 3,
comment 5). Then the corresponding BOR results of Tank 1 and Tank3 are summarized and listed in Table 8. There is just
a tiny relative difference between computed BOR and measured BOR, which further verified the validity of the proposed
approach. Furthermore, the whole simulation of current mesh (1.01 million cells) just requires 15 minutes in a standard
computer server, which can be efficiently utilized in BOR estimation for practical project. It could be regarded as a kind
10
of high-efficiency method by comparison of the conventional CFD method that required at least several hours, with
almost the same number of cells [28] (Reviewer 2, comment 1). Although errors still exist, the approach can be thought as
an effective way to quickly forecast the BOR of type C tank in the engineering field.

Fig. 14. (a) Temperature distribution of Tank 1; (b) Temperature distribution of Tank 2

Table 8 BOR of 30000 m3 FSRU tanks

LNG volume before test LNG volume after test Tank capacity Measured BOR Numerical BOR
Tank 3 3 3
(m ) (m ) (m ) (%) (%)
1-port 3135.2 3122.5 3951.1
0.273 0.261
1-starboard 3183.5 3174.6 3947.9
2-port 3130.5 3120.5 3665.7
0.259 0.247
2-starboard 3162.6 3153.6 3649.3

6. Conclusion
A kind of practical approach for analyzing BOR and temperature distribution of LNG cargo tank under different
filling ratio has been studied. The monitor of thermal condition in the cryogenic tank versus time is usually hard to realize
by numerical simulation method due to the computation cost and unknown initial condition. The equivalent thermal
conductivity of BOG proposed successfully overcome the complexity convection from the multiphase simulation, which
has been verified by the experiment and the practical case. Several main conclusions are obtained as: the proposed
approach owns a high accuracy to forecast the BOR and temperature distribution of LNG cargo tank under different
filling ratio, which could be utilized in the real engineering computation as a valid and high-efficiency method.
Meanwhile, the temperature distribution could be set as the initial condition for the further research in the instantaneous
simulation under different filling ratio. The comparison between pure conduction results and experimental measurements
also indicates the heat transferred from bulkhead account for the majority of heat during evaporation, lower filling ratio in
particular.

Acknowledgements
The work presented in this paper has been carried out under the co-support provided by The National Research
Program for High Technology Ship Development, China (No. MIIT 2014-498), the Science and Technology Project of
Guangdong Province, China (2015B090904010&2016B090918092) and the Marine Renewable Energy Special Fund,
China (QDME2013ZB01). The authors would like to acknowledge the co-support.

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Highlights
1. A conductive model is proposed to handle the complex convection of BOG.
2. Temperature distribution got from model can be set as initial condition.
3. The impact of bulkhead conduction on BOR is outstanding under lower filling ratio.

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