Vopak and Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies will establish an equal joint venture. The joint venture will be named LOHC Logistix and is intended to store, transport and supply hydrogen based on Hydrogenious' Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carrier (LOHC) technology. This is one of the key steps recently agreed by the two companies. They aim to advance LOHC market solutions and large-scale pilot projects.
Hydrogen is expected to play a dominant role in future energy systems. When it comes to handling the volatile hydrogen gas, the LOHC technology developed by Hydrogenious has great potential to help accelerate the development of an international hydrogen market. The LOHC pioneer from Germany uses the thermal oil benzyltoluene as a liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC-BT). It is already well established in industry as a heat transfer medium and has ideal properties for safe handling in ports.
Ideal properties
Due to its properties as a flame retardant and non-explosive carrier with high volumetric energy density, benzyltoluene can be treated as a fossil liquid fuel at ambient pressure and temperature within existing infrastructure, tankers and vehicles. This makes it a natural fit with the current port infrastructure and fleet of ships, rail cars and tankers. After hydrogen release (dehydrogenation), the LOHC can be reused many hundreds of times to bind hydrogen.
Pilot
Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies has sold pilot-scale LOHC systems to partners in several countries in recent years. These include Finland, Germany and the US. This summer, it implemented the first full LOHC supply chain for hydrogen mobility. Hydrogenious supplies the Erlangen hydrogen refuelling station in Germany via LOHC.
LOHC Logistix joint venture will support both parties - Vopak and Hydrogenious - in facilitating their efforts to supply green hydrogen to customers. In addition, the partners have committed to accelerate the planned LOHC plant at Chempark Dormagen (Germany) and Rotterdam.
