A Korean-Australian consortium led by LATTICE Technology has secured a grant from the Korean Government to develop large-scale standardized, transportable liquid hydrogen (LH2) Export and Import terminals to enable the fast-tracking of Green Hydrogen trade between Australia and Korea.
On the 4th January, LATTICE Technology confirmed its consortium’s ‘Basic Design of Standardized, Transportable 75,000 m3 LH2 Export and Import Terminals for Green Hydrogen’ was selected as a R&D project for the Korea-Australia International Collaboration on Hydrogen Supply Chains funded by KETEP (Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning), a grant agency of the Korean Government for energy. The grant will be for 2.1 BKRW (A$ 2.6 million Australian dollars) provided in stages over the next three years.
The consortium will develop a standardized LH2 export production and storage terminal on the Australian side and an LH2 import storage terminal on the Korean side, to be connected by the world’s first large-scale LH2 Tanker. LATTICE Technology have already secured a sizable grant from the Korean Government to develop a commercial-sized 50,000 m3 LH2 tanker with design work set to kick-off in May, 2022.
The transportable barge export terminal has electrolysis and liquefaction on the topsides, with LH2 product stored in vacuum insulated “Lattice Pressure Vessels” in the hull. This lowers capex and “fast-tracks” commercial project developments. The export terminal will be built in a Korean shipyard and transported to Australia for LH2 production from Australia’s abundant green electricity supply, as a “plug-and-play” facility. This brings a number of benefits for interested parties developing Australia’s renewable hydrogen export industry: fabrication quality assurance, short delivery time, minimal land use with less environmental impact, a faster approvals process and most important, high public acceptance and Social Licence to Operate (SLO).
The 75,000 m3 LH2 storage and 120 tpd (44,000 tpy) LH2 production capacity will be the world’s largest Green LH2 facility. According to Korea’s Hydrogen Roadmap, Korea plans to build overseas hubs for renewable energy and hydrogen production by 2030 with an annual import of 0.5 million tonnes of green hydrogen. To achieve this target, 13 export terminals for Green LH2 will be required.
The consortium’s goal is to standardize the export terminal design and operation, enabling “cloned” terminals to be fabricated, deployed, and operated to match export locations and site-specific conditions around Australia. This will significantly lower development timelines and costs to “fast-track” exports of Green Hydrogen from Australia to Korea.
The consortium consists of four Korean and two Australian companies. As the project leader, LATTICE Technology is responsible for overall project management and liquid hydrogen (LH2) storage systems. KOGAS Tech, the dedicated designer and operator for KOGAS LNG import terminals in Korea, will integrate the design of the key process systems including electrolyzers and the hydrogen liquefaction plant. The barge design is taken care of by KOMAC, an expert at hull structure design. KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Engineering) will design the cargo transfer systems and conduct its rigorous dynamic simulation for the key interfaces between the terminals and the tanker.
LH2 Energy, an Australian project implementation company developing the Darwin 100% Green Hydrogen Hub and the Darwin Green LH2 Export Project, will manage the various activities to install the export terminal at the Port of Darwin. Elecseed, another Australian company developing the Kumbarilla Renewable Energy Park (K-REP) at Western Downs in Queensland, also plans on-site large-scale green hydrogen production and pipeline transportation to Gladstone to expand its current project for LH2 exports to Korea. Several overseas companies in Japan, Singapore, and Europe, including KOMIPO who are co-developing K-REP with Elecseed and Seoul Bus in Korea, already promised to contribute to the project as observers and potential clients.
Costa Tsesmelis, Director of LH2 Energy and LATTICE Australia, says:
Darwin is an ideal location for a commercial-sized Australian Green LH2 Export Project given the Northern Territory’s excellent renewable energy resources and close distance to Korea. The consortium’s innovative project will further catalyze the progress of our Darwin Project development to build a barge export terminal and production facility, to deliver commercially viable exports of liquid hydrogen to Korea by 2030.
Keunoh Park, CEO of LATTICE Technology and the principal investigator for the consortium’s project, emphasizes its global reach and potential:
The outcomes of this project will be applicable not only to Darwin and Gladstone, but also to other locations around Australia and across the world where low-cost renewable energy may be plentiful. We aim to provide fast-track solutions for intercontinental liquid hydrogen solutions to achieve net zero.
In addition to LNG and CO2, LATTICE Technology has introduced a series of innovative solutions for LH2, which requires space-efficient, vacuum-insulated, pressurized containment over a wide capacity range. Combining its proprietary and commercially proven LPV (lattice pressure vessel) technology with new vacuum insulation, the company has developed the V-CCS™ (Vacuum-insulated Cargo Containment System) for LH2. In 2020, the company secured its approval-in-principal certificate for a 12,500 m3 V-CCS™ from Lloyds Register. This V-CCS™ tank sizing will be employed by the export and import terminals and the large-scale LH2 tanker.
For smaller-scale mobility applications LATTICE Technology is also fabricating a 0.25 m3 aluminum LPV for LH2 fuel storage for land vehicles with a Korean motor company. With a number of its collaborators, the company also plans to demonstrate a 1.0 m3 LH2 LPV with a fuel gas supply system for long-range Fuel Cell buses and heavy-duty trucks in 2022. Two 18 m3 LH2 LPVs will be installed at the KIMM cryogenic center (Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials) as receiver tanks for a 0.5 ton/day LH2 production plant.
