Lotte/Air Liquide form hydrogen jv
South Korea’s Lotte Chemical and French industrial gas supplier Air Liquide have formed a joint-venture firm Lotte Air Liquide Enerhy with plans to build a large-scale high-pressure hydrogen shipment centre with an expected capacity of over 5,500 tonnes/year in Daesan, South Korea.
The centre aims to start initial operations in the second half of 2024.
The facility is expected to have the largest capacity in the country and will be able to fuel 4,200 passenger cars or 600 commercial buses daily, according to Lotte Chemical. It will be located at Lotte Chemical’s Daesan plant and utilise by-product hydrogen from the site.
Enerhy plans to enter the metropolitan mobility market through this project. The joint venture also aims to build another shipping centre in Ulsan, the country’s seventh-largest metropolitan city, to handle hydrogen shipments in the Yeongnam region in future.
The joint venture partners previously signed an initial agreement to co-operate on hydrogen businesses in May 2021, and inked a deal to establish Enerhy in April this year.
Lotte Chemical plans to invest a total of US$4.5 billion to produce 1.2 million tonnes of clean hydrogen by 2030. The firm signed a deal in October to develop hydrogen and ammonia-related technologies for the Japanese and South Korean markets.
