Hyundai Glovis, GS Energy jointly pursue clean hydrogen biz

South Korea's logistics company Hyundai Glovis Co. on Monday said it signed a memorandum of understanding on the clean hydrogen and ammonia business with GS Energy.

The former will handle maritime transportation for the collaboration and the latter production of clean hydrogen and construction of import terminals.

Though demand for hydrogen is expected to rise, a major disadvantage is the difficulty of transporting it. To ship it, the element must be converted from a gas into a liquid, a process requiring extremely low temperatures of minus 253 degrees Celsius, but this leads to low storage density.

Adding nitrogen to convert hydrogen into ammonia form can overcome the difficulty of transporting liquefied hydrogen. Unlike hydrogen, ammonia liquefies far more easily at minus 33 degrees and can store 70% more hydrogen per unit volume, making mass transportation convenient. This explains Hyundai Glovis' interest in hydrogen's conversion to ammonia.

The company plans to get an early lead in the eco-friendly transportation market with its marine transportation capacity by investing 200 billion won ($154.2 million) to build two very large gas carriers (VLGCs) to ship ammonia. Just around 20 such vessels worldwide can do so, or under 10% of all VLGSs.

Write to Han-Shin Park at phs@hankyung.com