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Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI) has developed a fuel tank for ships that is able to store up to five times more liquefied natural gas (LNG) than existing types, according to local media reports.

Existing LNG-powered vessels are generally are only able to store less than 2,000 cubic metres (cbm). However, KHI's new adjustable box-shaped tank is said to be able to carry anywhere between 2,000 and 10,000 cbm. It also includes dividers inside the tank to increase resistance to turbulence.

KHI is set to spend a year commercializing the product, the Japanese media has said.

KHI has been involved in the development of environmentally friendly solutions for ships for several years. Back in 2011, Bunker Index reported that the company had been working to develop a hybrid power supply system for vessels through the use of its large nickel hydrogen batteries, known as Gigacell.

The same year it was also collaborating with Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (NYK Line), the Monohakobi Technology Institute (MTI), and Nippon Kaiji Kyokai (Class NK), carrying out shipboard tests to verify the effects of a jointly developed hybrid power supply system for vessels. The system was installed on NYK Line's Auriga Leader.

Since then, the company has been involved in various projects involving the design and construction of LNG-fuelled ships and LNG tanks. In 2012, KHI developed what DNV said at the time was 'a new type of LNG tank' providing more space for container cargo. KHI's Type B tank stored LNG in prismatic low pressure insulated tanks - it was the first time that such tanks had been proposed for a large container ship; the design was different from Type C cylindrical pressure tanks and was said to utilize the available space much better due to its prismatic, rectangular shape.

Around the same time, KHI also adopted a unique technology, the Kawasaki Panel System, for heat insulation in order to reduce the rate of evaporation of LNG.

Two years ago, KHI's L30KG gas engine - a main engine for large vessels fuelled solely by gas with an output capacity of over 2 MW - became the first Japanese-made gas engine to obtain type approval by DNV. It was based on the technology for a gas engine developed by the company for the distributed power generation market.