A historic first has been signed by Australia in the hydrogen field. Hydrogen is seen as the future oil. Australia’s ‘ship of the future’ is en route to Japan with the world’s first commercial shipment of supercooled liquid hydrogen.
The hydrogen industry is expected to be more profitable and competitive than the oil and natural gas industry, according to reports. State leaders from all over the world are debating, planning, and finally settling on specific hydrogen-related policies. Strategies for exporting hydrogen and facilitating cross-border hydrogen trade are highlighted. The next phase of a $500 million hydrogen energy supply chain (HESC) project for Victoria’s coalfields is being worked on by scientists at Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).
The project was launched as Australia’s most advanced hydrogen project and is also the first in the world to make liquid hydrogen by sea, liquefy it, and then bring it to an international market for sale in liquid form.Australian industry leaders and politicians welcomed the “ship of the future” before it set sail for Japan’s Kobe Port from the port of Hastings in Victoria, Australia. Liquid hydrogen, coal from the Latrobe Valley, and biomass feedstock are used to fill the high-tech tanks of the new liquefied hydrogen carrier’s propulsion system.
In order to make new exports “carbon neutral,” another project, CarbonNet, is essential. Commercial-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) network CarbonNet is designed to divert emissions from the Latrobe Valley industries to offshore landfills in Bass Strait. A further $20 million in federal funding was announced on Friday, contingent on additional state and Japanese capital, for the next phase of CarbonNet.
According to Jaala Pulford, Victoria’s Minister for Resources, it signed an agreement with Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation this year to provide financing and engineering expertise before regulatory or environmental consideration.
Additionally, the federal government has allocated an additional $7.5 million for the HESC project, which aims to produce 225,000 tons of liquefied hydrogen annually. There will be an annual reduction of 1.8 million metric tons of carbon emissions, according to government estimates. It would remove 350,000 gasoline-powered vehicles from the road. Hydrogen was produced in large quantities, trucked to Hastings, cooled to below-freezing temperatures, and liquefied to less than 800 times its volume in the pilot phase.
Travel between Australia and Japan is expected to increase over the next two years, as well as research into ways to reduce costs and carbon emissions. Blended with Latrobe Valley coal, the biomass feedstock will be adapted to produce hydrogen. Other proponents of hydrogen as a future hero fuel are working to create new ways to make it without using fossil fuels. Coal resources, according to HESC partners, are essential for expanding hydrogen supply chains in the short and medium term.
Kawasaki, J-Power, Iwatani, Marubeni, AGL Energy, and Sumitomo are among the project’s many collaborators. Japanese companies Shell, ENEOS Corporation and K-Line are also involved.
