- The ship is scheduled to head back to Japan in about a week.
- Australia aims to become a major exporter of fuel.
- The hydrogen is produced by reacting coal with oxygen and steam under high heat and pressure.
On Friday, a Japanese-Australian joint venture producing hydrogen from brown coal will begin loading its first cargo onto the world’s first liquid hydrogen carrier, in a test that has been delayed by nearly a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic as reported by National Post.
Suiso Frontier
The Suiso Frontier, built by Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI), arrived in Australia this week from Kobe, following a longer trip than the expected 16 days as the ship dodged bad weather and rough seas, said a spokesperson for the Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain (HESC) venture.
The ship is scheduled to head back to Japan in about a week.
Led by KHI, HESC is a A$500 million ($360 million) coal-to-hydrogen project backed by Japan and Australia as a way to switch to cleaner energy and cut carbon emissions.
Hydrogen, seen as a path to decarbonising industries that rely on coal, gas and oil, is key to Japan’s goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
Australia aims to become a major exporter of fuel.
Storage project
The Australian government on Friday committed a further A$7.5 million for HESC’s A$184 million pre-commercialisation phases and A$20 million for testing a capture and storage project for carbon dioxide released in the coal-to-hydrogen process to create a carbon-neutral product.
Last year, HESC started extracting 70 kg of hydrogen a day from brown coal in the Latrobe Valley, about 135 km (84 miles) east of Melbourne, where brown coal mines have long fueled some of Australia’s most polluting power stations.
The hydrogen is produced by reacting coal with oxygen and steam under high heat and pressure.
It is then trucked to a port site where it is cooled to minus 253 degrees Celsius (minus 423 Fahrenheit), liquefying it for export.
Final investment
The partners are looking to produce up to 225,000 tonnes of hydrogen a year.
They will need to make a final investment decision by 2025, with Australia racing against countries in the Middle East and elsewhere to produce carbon-neutral hydrogen, said Jeremy Stone, a director of J-Power, one of the HESC partners.
Partners in the project include Japan’s Electric Power Development Co, Iwatani Corp, Marubeni Corp, Sumitomo Corp and Australia’s AGL Energy Ltd, whose mine is supplying the brown coal.
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Source: National Post
