What is the difference between a fully refrigerated, semi-refrigerated ship and a pressurized ship?
A fully refrigerated ship has compressors and maintains the tank pressure at close to ambient pressure by cooling the LPG to below its boiling point (butane to just below 0 deg C and propane to about -42 deg C). Loading from and discharging into pressurized storage using fully refrigerated ships is very slow. A semi-refrigerated ship is also called a semi-pressurized ship. These ships also have compressors and can load and discharge LPG cargoes at facilities which are both refrigerated and pressurized. The majority of Carib LPG Trading ships are semi-refrigerated. A fully pressurized ship does not have any compressors and cannot discharge into refrigerated storage. Loading a fully pressurized vessel from refrigerated storage can be very slow.
