Vopak – Northern Green Crane (NL57)

Northern Green Crane (NL57)

With the Northern Green Crane project, Vopak intends to facilitate green hydrogen imports in the port of Rotterdam, making use of a so-called LOHC (Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carrier) technology, developed by the German based technology provider Hydrogenious (https://hydrogenious.net/). The capacity of the import facility is 12 tons of hydrogen per day. 

The company 

Vopak enables safe, clean and efficient storage and handling of bulk liquids and gases, in particular chemicals, oil products, LNG, gases, biofuels and vegoils for its customers. Vopak facilitates trade flows for multiple customers, often via open-access terminal infrastructure. Vopak is determined to develop key solutions for the world’s changing energy infrastructure focusing on hydrogen, CO2, flow batteries and renewable feedstocks. 

Hydrogenious (Germany) is both the LOHC supplier and the technology partner for Vopak in this project.

The Project objectives & location

In this LOHC technology the hydrogen is bound, for logistic reasons, to a larger molecule, the LOHC, at the hydrogen export location. This process is called a hydrogenation process.  The LOHC is then temporarily stored in conventional tanks (e.g. diesel tanks) and transported to Rotterdam using conventional vessels. The LOHC will then be unloaded at one of the Vopak terminals in Rotterdam and temporarily stored in conventional tanks (e.g. in regular diesel tanks) and dehydrogenated. This dehydrogenation (extracting the hydrogen out of the LOHC), takes place by heating the LOHC to 300 degrees C in a so-called dehydrogenation unit at the terminal location. The output of this dehydrogenation step, the gaseous hydrogen, will be pumped into a hydrogen pipeline; the dehydrogenated carrier will be transported back to the export location to be hydrogenated again. The purity of the hydrogen is 99,9%, which is enough for multiple use. The LOHC can be considered a logistic asset and stays in the system to be re-used many cycles. 

Summarised, the entire supply chain consists of an hydrogen production facility, a hydrogenation facility, an export terminal with storage facilities for the LOHC, and an import terminal with dehydrogenation unit. The latter is in scope of the project, including the LOHC. 

Envisioned timing of the project

The project started in February 2024 after initial preparations and is expected to be in operation in Q1 2029.

Website: www.Vopak.com and https://hydrogenious.net/ (for the technology)

Contact persons:
Feikje WIttermans
feikje.wittermans@vopak.com
Nataly Katan
nataly.katan@vopak.com