South Korea Funds Project to Build World’s Largest Liquid Hydrogen Carrier

South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy announced the formation of a public-private partnership and funding for an effort to build the world’s largest liquid hydrogen carrier. The government views it as a key opportunity where South Korea’s shipbuilders can develop a leadership position building on its current strategy of focusing on high-value ships.

“Liquefied hydrogen carriers are an area with high technical difficulty and very high initial technology development risk, so it is important for the government to play a leading role in securing a new source for Korean-shipbuilding,” said an official from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announcing the new project. “We will actively support the early acquisition of large-scale liquefied hydrogen carrier technology by organizing related laws and systems so that the technology we have developed can become a global standard.”

The government announced $39.5 million in funding in 2025 to launch the partnership which will involve the country’s three major shipbuilders (Hyundai Heavy Industries, Hanwha Ocean, and Samsung Heavy Industries) as well as experts from the ministry, universities, and research institutes.

It mapped out an ambitious schedule calling for the construction of a 2,000 cbm demonstration ship by 2027. It said the technology for a large ship would be completed by 2030 and the development of a 40,000 cbm vessel by 2032. They are calling for the commercialization of a large, 160,000 cbm vessel by 2040.

Korea looks to build a competitive advantage to support commercial hydrogen vessels by the 2040s (MOTIE)

To complete the ships, they called for cooling technology for the hold saying it will require -253 degrees C, ultra-low temperature storage tank technology versus the -163 degrees C required for LNG. They envision a vacuum insulation system. For the propulsion, they are proposing using hydrogen evaporation gas generated in the cargo hold combined with a fuel cell, hybrid engines using an energy storage system.

During the presentation, they recognized that liquified hydrogen carriers are highly difficult ships with no commercial examples having yet been developed. They highlighted 43 research and development projects currently underway involving 101 organizations, saying their goal is to unique the efforts into a single project.

The new task force will use the best domestic liquified hydrogen experts with the support of the Ministry.

They noted that the only hydrogen carrier that has been built is a small-scale demonstration vessel built in Japan. It has a 1,250 cubic meter tank. It too was built under a government-sponsored research program.

The designs for the Korean demonstration vessel call for a ship that will be 304 feet (92.8 meters) in length. It will have a capacity of 140 tons (2,300 cbm), making it the world’s largest and a key step in the development of this critical new market.