Quick and spill free connections for liquid hydrogen

MannTek has in­tro­duced LH2 (liquid hydrogen) so­lu­tions avail­able for trucks, ships and aviation, ad­dress­ing a key gap in the dis­tri­b­u­tion chain. The success lies in com­bin­ing tra­di­tion­al liquid hydrogen handling with modern chemical cou­plings.

Hydrogen offers several advantages: it’s highly efficient and produces zero emissions, with water as the only byproduct. Hydrogen is abundant and can be produced from various renewable sources. It has a high energy density, making it suitable for applications like fuel cells in transportation and energy storage.

While many experts are still busy talking about hydrogen as the fuel of the future, and big companies keep waiting for the politicians to create a legal framework for their investments, MannTek is already closing an important gap in the distribution chain of liquid hydrogen.

Physical properties a real challenge
The high demand on the thermal isolation on with heat intakes between 5 and 20 Watt is not only to protect the environment from the cold liquid. It is also to keep the heat outside to avoid boiling of the liquid inside, which may lead to rapid increase of the pressure. The extreme physical properties of hydrogen has been a real challenge, to meet the high demand on leakage rates from the rules and standards.

The idea behind the MannTek products is quite simple. The com­bi­na­tion of approved so­lu­tions from tra­di­tion­al liquid hydrogen handling and the con­nect­ing prin­ci­ple of modern chemical cou­plings made this concept suc­cess­ful. Even if the tem­per­a­ture inside the coupling is reaching down to -253°C, the outer con­nect­ing mech­a­nism is only exposed to ambient con­di­tions.

As a joint de­vel­op­ment partner of well-known in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­at­ing gas com­pa­nies, MannTek in Sweden has already so­lu­tions avail­able for truck fuelling and ship bunker­ing. These are suc­cess­ful­ly verified with Liquid Hydrogen at in­de­pen­dent lab­o­ra­to­ries, wit­nessed by third party in­spec­tions.

The first prototype for rocket re-fuelling
Both projects went into op­er­a­tion already in 2022.
Cus­tomers from all over the world are in­ter­est­ed in testing the cou­plings for several dif­fer­ent ap­pli­ca­tions. Already in 2019, the first pro­to­type for rocket re-fuelling has been suc­cess­ful­ly tested with liquid hydrogen. While other com­pa­nies were showing nice 3D-models and in­ter­est­ing concept studies, MannTek were pro­duc­ing hardware and testing. The fa­cil­i­ties in Mari­es­tad with a big cryo­genic testing area gave the right con­di­tions to take this op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Right conditions and right partners
Creating the right con­di­tions and finding the right partners to realize the complete hose package – in­clud­ing a proper vacuum in­su­la­tion guar­an­teed down to 10-4 mbar over several years in op­er­a­tion – has been a key factor to come to the point where we are today. We believe that liquid hydrogen ap­pli­ca­tions will have an im­por­tant place in the future energy in­fra­struc­ture. And we at MannTek are well prepared.

If you want to learn more about our hydrogen solution, contact our sales director Lars-Ove Gustavsson and key account manager Rickard Axelsson.

Questions and answers

How do we solve the chal­lenges of ex­treme­ly low tem­per­a­tures? Which ap­pli­ca­tions are our hydrogen solution suitable for and how does our coupling work? These and many more question CEO of MannTek Markus Bäck­ström and our tech­ni­cal director Gerhard Kopplin answer in our Q&A-sessions.

Customer stories

We are proud of the many projects we have together with our customers. Whether the application area is land, sea or air we have the customized solutions. Daimler and Norled are two of our cases we like to share with you.