USA’s leading gas and industrial chemicals company, Air Products and Chemicals, announced the start of operations at its new liquid hydrogen facility located in La Porte, Texas to support several downstream markets. The new plant will be having the capacity to produce around 11,000 tonnes of liquid hydrogen annually.

The liquid hydrogen plant, which began construction in 2018, will extract gaseous hydrogen from the Gulf coast-located Air Products’ hydrogen plant and pipeline system, which is the world’s biggest hydrogen pipeline network spanning 600 miles between Houston Ship Channel in Texas to New Orleans, Louisiana, and accounts for the supply of 1.4 billion feet of hydrogen each day from 23 hydrogen plants.

Liquid hydrogen is commercially used to fuel rockets through its combustion with fluorine or oxygen. It is also used as a propellent in nuclear-powered space vehicles. In the USA, the gaseous form of hydrogen is mostly used in refinery processes, fertilizer production, reducing metallic ores and powering electric vehicles.

As per ChemAnalyst, the global hydrogen market size is expected to expand with a quite healthy CAGR of around 6% owing to its vast usage in the petrochemical sector and the fast-growing hydrogen mobility market. The addition of the liquid hydrogen plant will cater to the rising demand for hydrogen in the USA’s end-user industries including petrochemicals, electronics, transport fuels, edible fats and oils etc. The company will be gaining operational benefits from the new plant that would enable higher production and a better supply network. The capacity addition will also propel the lowering of hydrogen prices in the USA as a consequence of improved hydrogen supplies.