Safety Requirements for Liquefied Hydrogen Tankers

R&D projects for establishing hydrogen supply chain have already been started in Japan in collaboration among the industry, government, and universities. One of the important subjects of the project is development of liquefied hydrogen tankers, i.e., ships carrying liquefied hydrogen in bulk. In general, basic safety requirements should be determined to design ships. However, the existing regulations do not specify the requirements for hydrogen tankers, while requirements for ships carrying many kinds of liquefied gases are specified in “International Code for the Construction and Equipment of Ships Carrying Liquefied Gases in Bulk” (IGC Code) issued by the International Maritime Organization, i.e., a special organization under the United Nations. Therefore, the basic safety requirements for hydrogen tankers should be developed. We conducted bibliographic survey on the IGC Code, ISO/TR 15916:2004 “Basic considerations for the safety of hydrogen systems”, and so on; in order to provide safety requirements taking into account the properties of liquid and gaseous hydrogen. In this paper, we provide safety requirements for liquefied hydrogen tankers as the basis for further consideration by relevant governments.