A consortium of public, private and academic experts led by Shell International Exploration and Production, Inc (Shell), a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell plc, is pioneering an ambitious path to enable large-scale liquid hydrogen (LH2) storage for international trade applications.
This is a largely untapped field with potential for advancing the global commercialisation of hydrogen as an accessible, affordable and low carbon energy commodity.
Shell and the consortium partners – including McDermott’s CB&I Storage Solutions, NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre, GenH2 and the University of Houston – have been selected by the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office to demonstrate that a large-scale LH2 tank, with a capacity ranging from 20,000 to 100,000 cubic metres, is both feasible and cost competitive at import and export terminals.
The DOE has awarded $6 million to finance the project, and Shell and CB&I Storage Solutions will both provide an additional $3 million each, for a total project fund of $12 million.
“A cost-effective, long-range hydrogen supply chain can have a transformative impact in shaping a sustainable future for energy,” said Yuri Sebregts, chief technology officer for Shell. “Our consortium recognises that this project can become a cornerstone in making that future possible. It’s a sizable engineering challenge – but we have the right people, partners and outlook to deliver this first-of-its-kind LH2 storage technology.”
“McDermott is leveraging the sixty years of LH2 storage technology expertise of our CB&I Storage Solutions business to exponentially scale up safe capacity thresholds to meet growing demands,” said Samik Mukherjee, executive vice president and chief operating officer, McDermott International. “This consortium will accelerate that momentum as we work together to advance the next generation of sustainable energy.”
The consortium will collaborate to develop a technically innovative and economically viable concept design for the large scale LH2 storage tank. Additionally, the group will engineer and construct a scaled-down demonstration tank that will be tested to validate the feasibility of the design and the thermal model for commercial-scale design.
This public, private and academic endeavour will support the goals of the DOE H2@Scale and Hydrogen Shot initiatives, bringing stakeholders together in an effort to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen and advance its role in the energy transition.
For more information visit www.shell.com
