On March 17, 2004, Nippon Steel Corp. of Japan opened a new facility to develop and demonstrate the technology for producing liquid hydrogen. This is part of the Japan Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Demonstration (JHFC) Project directed by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. In April 2004, the company will begin test runs of the facility, which had been under construction in its Kimitsu Works in Chiba Prefecture since 2003.

The technology development is geared to providing hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles, and the purposes of the trials are: (1) to build an optimum system to purify hydrogen from by-product gas generated in the steel manufacturing process, or "coke oven gas" (COG), and liquefy the hydrogen; and, (2) to demonstrate that the system works as a whole, from the supply of liquid hydrogen produced at the facility, to Ariake Hydrogen Station in Tokyo, to the running of fuel cell vehicles using the hydrogen.

This will be the world's first verification test using COG to produce liquid hydrogen. At the facility, 0.2 tons of liquid hydrogen with a purity greater than 99.999 percent of volume will be produced daily.

There are a number of advantages of producing hydrogen from coke oven gas:
1. COG contains about 55 percent hydrogen, which makes possible the efficient separation and recovery of hydrogen.
2. Its simple production system helps achieve high energy efficiency and offers environmental benefits.
3. As this hydrogen can be mass-produced, cost reductions can be expected in the future.

Nippon Steel intends to continue providing the COG-derived hydrogen until some time in the future when hydrogen produced using renewable energy becomes widely available.




Posted: 2004/06/09 10:24:24 AM
Japanese version

TAG Energy , Government , Manufacturing industry , Technology , Transportation