April 12, 2024
Kobe Steel, Ltd.
Kobe Steel, Ltd. announces that it has decided to start a demonstration test of its Open Rack Vaporizer (ORV)*1 for liquid hydrogen, at the Company’s production site Takasago Works (Hyogo Prefecture, Japan) in March 2025. ORVs are promising candidates for large-scale liquid hydrogen vaporizers. The demonstration of ORV using liquid hydrogen will be an advanced initiative worldwide.
We have positioned this demonstration as the next step after the demonstration of our Group’s hybrid-type hydrogen gas supply system,*2 allowing us to expand our product lineup of liquid hydrogen vaporizers to the three types listed below:
As shown in Table 1, we are working to meet various needs and address the use of liquid hydrogen in a variety of applications, such as land-based use and marine transport, in order to promote the social implementation of hydrogen energy.
This demonstration will use the liquid hydrogen supply facilities built for the subsidy project*5 called “the development of an intermediate fluid vaporizer for liquid hydrogen that enables the use of liquid hydrogen cold energy,” which was selected by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) and completed at the end of March 2023. Using the existing facilities, we can shorten the preparation time for the demonstration, during which we will collect data on the heat transfer behavior and vaporizing performance of ORV for liquid hydrogen.
We will continue to work on the development and demonstration of vaporizers, which are essential for the social implementation of hydrogen energy, and contribute to achieving a hydrogen society, as we work toward a world in which people, now and in the future, can fulfill their hopes and dreams while enjoying safe, secure, and prosperous lives.
Table 1: Liquid hydrogen vaporizer product lineup
*1:Open Rack Vaporizer (ORV)
In many LNG receiving terminals around the world, ORVs function as base-load LNG vaporizers utilizing seawater as a heating medium. Kobe Steel, one of the world’s leading ORV manufacturers, has over 40 years of experience and a proven track record of reliability in this field. We developed the ORV for liquid hydrogen by leveraging our expertise in the design and manufacture of vaporizers. Our ORV is designed to vaporize liquid hydrogen inside by pouring seawater over the heat transfer panel, which is composed of aligned heat transfer tubes.
ORV page on the Kobelco Group corporate website
ORV for LNG Structure Illustration
*3: IFV page on the Kobelco Group corporate website
*4: Kobe Steel’s PCHEs are commercialized under the brand name of Diffusion-bonded Compact Heat Exchanger (DCHE)
DCHE page on the Kobelco Group corporate website
*5: Development of Technologies for Realizing a Hydrogen Society | NEDO
NEDO entrusts Kobe Steel with development of intermediate fluid vaporizer for liquid hydrogen that enables use of liquid hydrogen cold energy (Press release on May 19, 2022)
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