Chaconia by Javelin - 1/100 - RADIO - LPG Tanker

[Javelin]

Oh yes, dusting is an issue, although I am thinking of a display case for this one. Probably won't sail with it anymore in that case, or just make a case where I can easily put the vessel in and out (perhaps even through the bottom of the case? ) In any case, when I'm dusting off parts of the vessel where I'm working, it literally has piles of dust on it... 

 

Since I need to go to sea again (yes, time to continue my research on that manifold area), I've been doing some small items and projects around the vessel. 

Somehow I've always avoided the ventilation of forward spaces. It's a pipe with several bends in it, connected to a more or less central vertical ventilation shaft containing the fan. I now built that. The head of the fan was turned on a mini lathe, but I believe the diameter is too small, so I'll probably have to redo that. One of my issues is availability of styrene rods for easy machining. Currently I've had to glue tubes of different diameters to each other, but often the glue is not evenly distributed, causing damage when I'm turning on the edge between the tubes. I guess I'll have to find a source of rods as I'm a bit tired of trying many times to get a single good result. 

It still needs to be painted. 

 

(you can also see the crooked forward mast, this happened in a collision with a bridge, where I lost sight of the vessel. I will still need to fix that some day)

 

Next were the bursting discs of the hold spaces. Each (independent) tank is sitting inside a hold space. This space is normally filled with either inert gas (LPG/flammable cargo) or dry air (ammonia). The pressure in those spaces is above atmospheric and of course subject to change with temperature. In order to protect the ship's structure, there are overpressure (safety) valves on those hold spaces, to release pressure when it gets too high. If, for some reason, the pressure is rising and the safety valves cannot handle the rise, there is a big bursting disc on each space. This disc simply breaks and open the space up to the atmosphere. Since you don't want parts of those discs flying around the deck when that happens, they are mounted in a protective cover that catches any debris. 

I had built 3 elbows about 10 years ago, finishing 1 completely, and then somehow never completed the remaining 2. Since I had an example, I knew exactly what to do, so they are all ready now. The very fine net around the piece is actually a tea bag. In those days they sold these plastic tea bags, luckily I saved a few, since I don't see those in the shop anymore. They have a very fine, strong netting texture. 

 

I also made a platform for tank 2, that will later on be sided by 2 stairs, 1 on each side of the big seawater pipe. It will receive a few more feet, but I first need to complete the piping below before I can finalize that (part of the research).You can also see one of those unfinished bursting disc structures. 

 

The platform will eventually be flush with the tank dome. 

 

 

Although I didn't remember the crappy paint job on this vessel, I can see some spots that need some fixing.... A lot of them in fact. Painting, clearly my least favorite part of this hobby. 

[Dr PR]

Do you ever buy from McMaster-Carr? It is an industrial supplier but they sell small quantities to hobbyists too. I have been purchasing from them for decades. Top quality items at prices better than you find in hobby shops (if you can still find a hobby shop).

 

They have quite a selection of plastic and metal stock for machining. The only shortcoming is that much of their stock is larger sizes and not the very small things for modelling.

 

https://www.mcmaster.com/products/rods/?s=plastic+rods

 

Look around their site and you will find all sorts of useful things!

Edited March 9 by Dr PR

[Javelin]

It definately looks very useful, but I live in Belgium, so I guess it might be a bit difficult to order from them. I have however found some online shops for plastics closer to my place, so that's where I'll go shopping very soon. 

 

In the meanwhile I've continued with the hose handling crane. Painted it, detailed it further (not yet on this picture). 

I will however keep it loose untill the equipment around it is finished. I had the idea (at the beginning of this build) of putting a thread bar with nuts through it, so I could use it as a handle to lift the lid from the hull, but I've decided against it. There was little room inside that crane to put a nut and I guess grabbing it, pulling some weight on it, would probably destroy the crane eventually. 

 

Apart from this, I've finally started tackling some issues passed on to me by the younger-me. 

For structural members that can take some hit from the water, I decided to glue it directly to the wood rather than to the filler coat that covers it. However, this means I have to remove some of that filler to insert the pieces. On the manifold drip trays, I made a mistake in that, so now I need to cover some gaps and paint them over. On both sides I made a measuring error, placing the drip trays too much forward. 

 

And on the forward edge, those drip trays should have acted as camouflage for the lid seam. The idea was good, the execution on the other hand... 

Not sure what I was thinking when I thought of fixing the aft boundary of the drip tray on the vessel and the forward and aft boundary to the lid. 

Apart from that, there is also a small angle that's supposed to be there, but it seems younger-me didn't really think of a solution for that. 

 

I have now removed the aft boundary from the vessel, inserted a plate as a doubler to the bottom in order to have the complete drip tray boundary fixed to the lid. Since the grating is on top of that drip tray, the plate will be hardly visible, an acceptable sacrifice to solve this little issue. 

 

Still lots of clean-up to do on the vessel, I guess I'll start using my airbrush along with my regular paint brush that I've been using to remove the dust up till now. 

 

 

[64Pacific]

Impressive work, the piping looks great!

[Mirabell61]

Excellent work Roel,

congrats, a real eye catcher

Nils

[Javelin]

Thanks Nils, 

This is the (partial) result of the corrections. You can also see in the first image what I meant with the boundary thing on the edge of the hatch. The filler chipped (and will probably continue to do so) at the edge, probably during removal and placement of the hatch (under which the battery and ballast are). If I would have put a vertical styrene plate (sanded flush with the filler) on the hatch and ship edge to contain the filler, this chipping probably wouldn't have happened. I've been thinking about inserting it now, but I guess this might do more harm than good. Sanding it flush and repainting only that edge will be difficult to blend in with 10-year old paint. There is of course also the issue of already placed details on that edge. 

The I-beam that supports the cargo lines next to the drip tray will also have to be redone. 

 

 

Some clean-up work to do on this side underneath the drip tray. There are some cut remains from the original glued boundary plate on the deck. 

 

Currently I'm building up a view of all the support structures in the manifold area. I'm looking at pictures from a lot of different angles to figure out how these structures are made. Unlike today, where things are rather uniform, it seems these supports were somewhat improvised around the piping. 

This is one of these typical things where you can spend hours figuring out what to build, to be called away to do something else and having to restart the next day... That's why I'm making these plans now. No doubt I'll still have to look at some pictures to verify things, but at least I have an idea of the way ahead when I restart building. 

The left part is actually a blank version of the walkway on top of the manifold area taken from of the ship's plans, which I then copied several times and where I can then add different layers of piping and supports without remeasuring all the time. It also helps me to verify some distances with comparisons of other equipment. 

 

 

[KeithAug]

Pipes have never been so interesting.

[Valeriy V]

These intricacies of pipes are simply crazy! I will never build a tanker model. 

  Great job, Roel! ✌️

[Dr PR]

Aw, come on Valeriy! No guts, no glory!

[Javelin]

So, time to continue. 

I do have plans now, but still I need to think about the sequence of construction. I also had some hesitation regarding 2 small pipes coming from the compressor room towards the manifold. I had made provisions for those pipes in way of making large supports on the big pipe to accommodate them, but I was never sure if I'd place them after all. 

Eventually I decided to place the pipes. I had put part of a pipe below that manifold. It didn't look right, so I removed it and built those pipes in different sections. The joints next to tank dome 2 will mostly be covered by the platform shown in previous posts. In below picture you can see the brass pipes running parallel to the big pipe. The joints are hidden in the shadows.

 

The reason I had to put them now was of course that they were also a bottleneck for construction of the manifold. I wouldn't be able to place them if I continued further on the manifold. 

 

And I've started the structure of the manifold on portside. All beams in place here. 

 

[Jim Lad]

Your giant jigsaw puzzle is looking superb!

 

John

[Javelin]

Been a while again, but there's no messing with the 2-piece quotum. 

 

Although it doesn't look like much, I'm busy with a critical pipe. One that scared me a bit (= stopped at that point in the past) due to its complex shape. 

It's the bunker manifolds. 2 pipes are there, an HFO (Heavy Fuel Oil) system and a Diesel Oil system. They are shaped very strangely, but I assume they did it that way to make sure that the line can be drained properly to the tank, so in case of a leak on the manifold, there would only be a limited amount of oil that could possibly leak to the flange side (that is at least my theory for this odd shape). 

 

A long while back I made preparations for this system since I put a 1.5mm rod with a 90° bend already in that manifold. I would not be able to place such a pipe afterwards. I was a bit obsessed with having as little joints in those pipes as possible and always tried to make things from 1 piece. In the end, the installed pipe didn't have a good 90° bend and didn't want to go in place, so I clipped it near the bend. Made a proper 90° bend. I also could remove both pieces of the pipe that way and adjust their lengths properly without risk of damage to the rest of the construction. 

Having decided to do this, it allowed me to take the next step more easily. 

As you can see, it goes over the edge of the hatch, complicating things a bit more, as the pipe has to be properly sized and fitted, there's no way I could bend and glue the aft piece to the drip tray. 

Flanges and valves were dry fitted for testing. 

 

 

Here, handwheels are already fitted to the valves. I used 0.3mm thick styrene discs which I drilled out in the center and later on in the 4 corners.  This pipe had to be painted and fixed in order to proceed with the transverse beams above them. 

 

Here it is painted and fixed in place. The forward transverse beams are in place, since the DO system only goes to the aft drip tray. DO system (Smaller capacity and diameter of pipe) is dry fitted here. The whole process involves a lot of bending, fitting, bending, mounting the hatch back on the ship to see for the drip trays, then removing it again to work on the piping etc. 

 

Once the DO system is in place, I'm ready to continue with the transverse beams and then I can proceed 1 level up with the actual transverse cargo pipes. 

[Javelin]

So now both bunker manifolds are in place. Not on Portside, because on that side the bunkerline is actually crossing over the cargo piping (due to the longitudinal piping rack). So first up is the transverse cargo piping and then PS HFO bunker pipe (DO pipe does run underneath the pipe rack, logics 🤪...)

 

First was lining out the support bars for the piping. I wanted to start aft and connect to the cargo heater system, but decided against it and started on the forward piping. Aft part will be more difficult as it's the part going over the edge of the hatch. It would also have restricted my access for the forward piping probably causing damage to the aft piping, so, first forward. 

 

Since I had the two supports of the manifold piping in place, I could now put a transverse pipe in place to line out the supports. I used normal straight pipes. I'm also building the bent cargo piping on a flat surface to have the bends in a single plane. 

As you can see I held the supports up with some copper wire attached to the beams. I used CA on 1 or 2 vertical supports and normal plastic glue (= slower curing, but stronger bond) on the rest of the supports. 

 

One of the supports near the center was a bit angled in, not leaving enough space for the aft (Inert Gas manifold) pipe to pass. I used a spreader on top of the pipe to keep them at a correct distance while using the support to keep at the proper distance. 

 

Seems to have worked. The 3 forward pipes in place. Most forward is Liquid System 2, followed by Vapour System 2 and Inert Gas line. 

For normal cargo operations the Vapour Return is not used on LPG tankers. Normally the reliquefaction plant will liquefy the vapour coming from the tanks and send the liquid/condensate back to those tanks during the loading operation. 

If for some reason the reliquefaction plants can not handle the vapour and pressure rises too much in the tanks, the vapour return connection can be opened towards the terminal, but in that case the vessel will have to pay a fine (normally vapour return is sent to a flare and is therefore considered a loss). So it's almost always connected to the shore terminal, but rarely used. 

 

This may look like major progress, but it's not. As you can see I need to make a lot of flanges for valve connections on those pipes. Lining the pipes up transversally and longitudinally is a challenge as you need to keep the longitudinal distance on the manifold equal, while you also need to keep the bends in the correct places. Again a lot of fitting, adjusting, fitting again etc. 

The forward liquid system also has a big cargo strainer connected. During loading, you normally load through the strainer (you don't want dirt in your tanks), while during discharging, this strainer is generally bypassed (but often stainers are using inside the manifold connections). Of course this means you need valves to by-pass this strainer, so again more valves to add on the system. The stainer you can see already on the starboard side, unpainted. 

 

It will take a while before I finish these lines, but once they are done, it will be quite a step forward to completion of the vessel. 

[ccoyle]

How can those of us who aren't piping engineers know for certain that all that piping wasn't just added to the ship in random patterns? 🤔😉

[Roger Pellett]

Piping has a certain logic.  High point vents, low point drains, bypasses around some eqipment and valves, and loops to absorb expansion and contraction in long runs.  There are industry standards for fittings like elbows, tees, flanges, etc.  Long Radius ells are formed to a radius of 1.5 nominal pipe diameters, eg a 4in nominal sized elbow is formed on a 6in radius although the outside diameter of the fitting and pipe that it welds to is 4.5in.  Metric pipe sizes while specified in metric dimensions usually correspond to American pipe sizes.  Pipe bends are usually specified in nominal pipe diameters too;  3 dia, 5dia, etc.  Unlike fittings, which are purchased from a manufacturer, bends would be made at the shipyard or by specialized pipe fabricators (where I worked for most of my career).

 

Roger

 

 

[Javelin]

On 5/16/2024 at 2:45 PM, ccoyle said:

How can those of us who aren't piping engineers know for certain that all that piping wasn't just added to the ship in random patterns? 🤔😉

Not sure if you're talking about the model, or the real ship... On the real ship, as Roger explained there are quite a few "rules" that determine how this is all set up. A side note to that is that there is a certain pecking order in the design. With so many people involved, I would assume somebody designs the hull, then the "cargo guy" can do his thing and then the next one in line etc. That does complicate a lot of things for a lot of people I assume. The engineer who had to design the fresh water system and piping for example, was probably the last in line and had to arrange his piping from the fresh water tanks to the manifolds as well. On Chaconia I noticed they had dismantled most of that piping, using only the aft connection to bunker fresh water when required. 

The same counts for hydraulics etc. The engineer who designed the cargo system put some hydraulic valves in his system, but probably did not design the run of hydraulic piping. 

So in some cases, we do wonder why they did what they did, the way they did it... 

Your remark did remind me to put a picture of that real manifold in here, since I don't think I posted that yet. 

So yes, I still have a lot of work to do. On the other hand, it does show the real paint job on those ships, a reason I'm not too concerned about painting on the model. 😂 The big white pipes on the manifold are actually the liquid lines, they are frozen due to the cold liquid being pumped. 

 

As mentioned before, that liquid line was going to take a while. Once I have that one, it'll be easier. Below is that strainer and it's by-pass etc. 

 

To adjust piping and get a staight cut I use my old pipe cutter. It goes only down to diameters of 3mm, so it can't cut through, however, the cutter does leave a nice straight cut mark, which I can later on follow with a knife to get a 90° cut. 

 

I thought a while about the cross shaped reinforcement on the lid of the strainer, but decided it really was required to give a proper impression. The lid itself is a litho top with the bolts punched in, backed by a 0.3mm styrene plate to give a little more thickness. The cross is made up of 0.3mm styrene. 

 

The strainer body itself also has support beams, but those will be added later, in an opposite fashion, since you can't line up everything from bottom to top. Additionally there is still a pipeline that needs to go from this liquid line down to the booster pumps (part of that pipe can be seen near the deck level, with a piece of brass wire sticking out). I am nearly there when it comes to this pipe. 

[Kevin]

wow

[KeithAug]

You clearly love pipes. 🙂

[Ian_Grant]

I can never in my ignorance pick out in the photos what you are discussing in text, nonetheless I am enthralled by the complexity of this build. Would love to see it first hand in water. Congratulations and keep up the amazing work!

[Glen McGuire]

39 minutes ago, Ian_Grant said:

I can never in my ignorance pick out in the photos what you are discussing in text, nonetheless I am enthralled by the complexity of this build.

You and me both, Ian!  Strainer body, booster pumps, vapor return, bursting discs...my head is spinning!

 

I do have a question, Roel.  I may have missed it in an earlier post, but what is your guide for such a complex piping layout?  Do you have plans from the ship, are you going off pictures, are you designing it on your own?

[mtaylor]

I'm with the enthralled group.   My mind is totally boggled by this model.  

[Jim Lad]

Amazing; just amazing!

 

John

[Dr PR]

Nice work Roel. Are you still serving on this ship?

 

The piping is complex, but I think it is in the same league as the rigging on a large sailing ship. Everything has a purpose, function and place.

 

I noticed the large "U" bends in the liquid pipes. Since they ice over I guess they must expand and contract quite a bit, hence the "U" sections to absorb the flexing?

[Javelin]

Hi Phil, 

it's actually quite a while ago that I served on this ship, around 15 years now... But technology is technology, so I remember most of it. 

The U-shapes are indeed to absorb expansion. I've always wondered why they had two bends on the transverse manifold lines, but during construction of this model it actually appeared to me. The liquid enters from the longitudinal lines through that strainer line into the transverse line, somewhere around the center. You load or discharge only on 1 side of the vessel, portside or starboard side is connected to shore, that means the other side is blinded off and contains a gas bubble. Since there is no liquid entering that side, it doesn't cool down (or at least much less so). Due to that effect they put one U-shape on each side, so you certainly pass the cold liquid through one of the U-shapes. 

 

And I agree on the complexity, I believe a fully rigged model is in the same league, you're basically also taking a lot of small steps to slowly build up that final complex appearance. In a very similar way you have to plan which lines to do first and which ones later. 

 

8 hours ago, Ian_Grant said:

I can never in my ignorance pick out in the photos what you are discussing in text, nonetheless I am enthralled by the complexity of this build. Would love to see it first hand in water. Congratulations and keep up the amazing work!

 

Thank you very much for actually saying that Ian. It appeared logical to me that people could pick out the new stuff on the pictures and relate that to the text. Now that I know it's not that obvious, I'll work on that to make it more clear. I'll take an overview picture today and mark the different parts on that overview. I've also been thinking to make a small diagram showing the piping and flow, perhaps I'll do that as well if people would be interested in that. 

 

 

Edited May 22 by Javelin

[Javelin]

7 hours ago, Glen McGuire said:

You and me both, Ian!  Strainer body, booster pumps, vapor return, bursting discs...my head is spinning!

 

I do have a question, Roel.  I may have missed it in an earlier post, but what is your guide for such a complex piping layout?  Do you have plans from the ship, are you going off pictures, are you designing it on your own?

I'm definitely not designed it myself, I'd make it much simpler and wouldn't take 10+ years to build it if I were 😁.

I have some plans, but a General Arrangement plan doesn't really show the whole piping. It mainly just covers the main pipes and does give a good indication of its location and dimensions. I combine that drawing with a LOT of pictures, 100's of them (much like the manifold picture I posted previous post). That's also why the research takes so much time. For a lot of the details I need to scan through the pictures to get an angle on some details, then determine what size they are and what their actual location is compared to their surroundings. 

[Glen McGuire]

5 hours ago, Javelin said:

I've also been thinking to make a small diagram showing the piping and flow, perhaps I'll do that as well if people would be interested in that. 

 

Yes, Please!  That would be fascinating (and helpful).

[Javelin]

Well here we go then. Hope this clarifies a few things. Always a big difference between a regular diagram and the actual construction. A lot of complexity is added simply by having those 2 fully separated systems (marked on the lines by a single line or a double one). 

The diagram is a single tank depiction with only a single pump. To make things worse, the tanks are split longitudinally in 2 halves for stability reasons. 1 pump is located in each half. The top and condensate system however, are connected, to keep the pressures equal (so you can't mix put two products in 1 tank). 

For loading there is a (small) valve located between the pumps so you can equalize the liquid levels. The different lines on the drawing are colored in the same color as the lines on the ship, so that should be clear. I believe I marked everything from the drawing on the picture. 

This drawing would only explain loading or discharging, but there are additional lines that are used for "special operations", eg. dry docking, changing cargo etc. 

 

Normal life cycle would be something like this:

- Dock: Ambient air 

- drying the tank (dry air) (ambient temperature, vessel underway to loading port)

- Inerting the tank (removal of oxygen to avoid flammable mixtures when loading flammable gasses) (ambient temperature, vessel underway to loading port)

- Filling the tank with cargo gas (depends on which gas you will load, done to remove the inert gas from the system, since that doesn't work in the reliquefaction plant later on and it would still retain some moisture in the system, which you want to avoid) (ambient temperature, arrived in either special port to receive small amount of cargo, or in loading port itself)

- Cooling down of cargo tank (going from ambient to loading temperature using condensate line top spray)

- Loading of cargo

 

When going to dry dock:

 

- discharging last cargo as much as you can (cold temperature)

- sending warm gas to the bottom to remove last liquid cargo

- warm-up of cargo tank to warm up the insulation and tank walls

- inerting of cargo tank 

- aeration of cargo tank 

- once gas free, vessel can enter dry dock

 

In the above sequences a lot of different non-fixed connections are made between the pipes and I'll avoid pointing all those out in detail. When changing cargo it's practically the reverse. First you prepare the vessel like going to dry dock and then you prepare it for the next cargo, much like after dry dock. With propane and butane you can often cheat a bit, but you can't do that when going from propane to ammonia etc. 

 

Hope it's a bit more clear, let me know if you want more details. 

 

 

[Jim Lad]

Ah, yes, now everything's perfectly clear. Errr, what was that again? Think I'll just enjoy watching this beautiful model grow.! 

 

John

[Dr PR]

Roel,

 

We will take your word for it! We don't have to know how it works, and you are doing an excellent job of modelling it.

[KeithAug]

18 hours ago, Jim Lad said:

Ah, yes, now everything's perfectly clear.

Seconded.