A consortium of public, private and academic experts led by Shell International Exploration and Production Inc. is pioneering an ambitious path to enable large-scale liquid hydrogen (LH2) storage for international trade applications. This is a largely untapped field with potential for advancing the global commercialization of hydrogen as an accessible, affordable and low carbon energy commodity.

Shell and the consortium partners—including McDermott's CB&I Storage Solutions, NASA's Kennedy Space Center, GenH2 and the University of Houston—have been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office to demonstrate that a large-scale LH₂ tank, with a capacity ranging from 20,000 to 100,000 m³, is both feasible and cost competitive at import and export terminals. The DOE has awarded $6 MM to finance the project, and Shell and CB&I Storage Solutions will both provide an additional $3 M each, for a total project fund of $12 MM.

The consortium will collaborate to develop a technically innovative and economically viable concept design for the large scale LH₂ storage tank. Additionally, the group will engineer and construct a scaled-down demonstration tank that will be tested to validate the feasibility of the design and the thermal model for commercial-scale design.

This project aims to advance the US as a global energy leader in LH₂-based international supply chain development and facilitate the commercialization of both blue and green hydrogen export opportunities. The insulation technology, cryogenic testing equipment and thermal model developed under this program aims to have widespread benefits for several LH₂ applications.