A consortium in Japan says it has “realised the world’s first international hydrogen supply chain”, after successfully extracting H 2 from a liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC) shipped from Brunei.

The Advanced Hydrogen Energy Chain Association for Technology Development (AHEAD) demonstration project aims to show that a global hydrogen supply chain can be established using LOHC — a chemical that can safely transport hydrogen at room temperature and ambient pressure. This is in contrast to compressed hydrogen and liquid H 2 , which requires near-absolute-zero temperatures.

The LOHC being used here is toluene (C 7 H 8 ), one of the many components of crude oil. Hydrogen produced in Brunei is added to the toluene to create methycyclohexane (C 7 H 14 ), before being shipped more than 4,000km inside containerised tanks to Kawasaki City in Japan, where the hydrogen is extracted at a dehydrogenation plant. The “unloaded” toluene is then shipped back to Brunei to be re-used.

“The commencement of global hydrogen supply chain is a notable step towards the realisation of [a] CO 2 -free ‘Hydrogen Society’,” said the AHEAD consortium — which includes Japanese conglomerates Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Chiyoda Corp and is funded by the Japanese government-sponsored New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).

For an analysis of LOHC and other methods of transporting hydrogen, click here.