Recently, low temperature fluids are used more commonly, and consequently, leakage related accidents become crucial issues. These accidents are mainly due to significant shrinkage of pipe flange connection elements. It has been reported that leakage accidents often occur when low temperature fluids start to flow, or when the flow rate starts to decrease. This is because under these circumstances, the clamping force in bolts connecting a pair of pipe flanges is presumed to decrease significantly. In the previous paper, a numerical approach based on Finite Element method (FEM) was proposed to simulate a simpler flow condition than those in actual pipelines. In this paper, the numerical approach is applied to more realistic conditions by enabling the surface of low temperature fluids to move up and down. When using liquid nitrogen, the bolt force was reduced to less than 40% of its initial value shortly after the fluid started to flow. When applying the numerical method to an LNG pipeline, it was found that the bolt force momentarily showed a significant reduction as was the case with liquid nitrogen.

  Marine lean burn gas engines use natural gas as a fuel and contribute to reducing both NOx and CO₂ emissions. On the other hand, the slipped methane which is the unburned methane emitted from the marine lean burn gas engines may have an impact on global warming. Palladium (Pd) catalysts for CH₄ oxidation are considered to be one of the most effective means to suppress the slipped methane from lean burn gas engines because they are still active in the lower exhaust gas temperature. However, recent studies have shown that water vapor (H₂O) inhibits CH₄ oxidation on theses catalysts and deactivates their oxidation capacity. When using Pd catalysts for an exhaust gas aftertreatment in order to reduce the volume of slipped methane from lean burn gas engines, we need to overcome the issue of these catalysts deactivation at the time of higher H₂O concentration. This paper explored conditions necessary for sound operations of marine lean burn gas engines by investing possible impacts of the temperature and composition of simulated exhaust gas and characterization of Pd catalysts on their CH₄ oxidation performance. Our case study also producedan appropriate geometric size as a design parameter for a CH₄ converter to be installed on a marine lean burn gas engine to reduce the slipped methane.