On June 10, 2026, China’s inland waterway shipping achieved a major technological breakthrough in its green hydrogen transition. According to the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission, the world’s first demonstration vessel featuring a “hydrogen internal combustion engine + organic liquid hydrogen storage” power system, jointly developed through coordinated R&D led by Huacan Ke Ship Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. together with dozens of research and industry organizations, has officially commenced construction and plans to complete launch testing within 2026. The implementation of this project marks a substantive breakthrough in long-standing challenges in hydrogen-powered vessel applications, and signals that inland hydrogen shipping has formally entered the critical implementation stage of full-vessel, real-machine validation.
For a long time, the storage and transportation segment has been the core bottleneck constraining the large-scale popularization and application of hydrogen energy. Traditional hydrogen storage and transportation has mainly relied on two models—high-pressure cylinder storage or ultra-cryogenic liquid hydrogen storage—which not only entail high construction and operating costs, but also require extremely stringent safety control standards. In particular, conventional onboard hydrogen storage equipment must withstand high-pressure operating conditions of several hundred atmospheres, and the investment required to build supporting hydrogen refueling stations far exceeds that of traditional fuel stations. High costs and strict safety thresholds have significantly limited the implementation and popularization of hydrogen energy in transportation fields such as vessels, creating an industry dilemma of “difficulty getting hydrogen onboard.”
The organic liquid hydrogen storage technology applied in this implementation specifically addresses the dual challenges of safety and economics in hydrogen shipping storage and transportation, clearing key technical barriers for hydrogen energy to enable inland waterway shipping at scale. The core principle of this technology is to use a reversible chemical reaction to integrate hydrogen into a special liquid organic carrier material, enabling safe storage and controllable release of hydrogen. During vessel operations, the onboard liquid hydrogen storage medium can release hydrogen through heated dehydrogenation; the hydrogen internal combustion engine then generates electricity through combustion to recharge the onboard lithium battery, and ultimately the vessel is propelled by an electric motor. The overall operating logic is similar to that of range-extended NEVs, delivering a stable and efficient operating mode.
In terms of safety performance, the advantages of this technology are particularly prominent. Project-related tests show that, both before and after hydrogen storage, the liquid organic carrier medium does not have flammable characteristics and cannot be ignited by ordinary open flames. According to Huacan Ke Chief Engineer Yuan Yi, the hydrogen storage medium features non-toxic and harmless, and not easily volatile characteristics, allowing storage and transportation to be completed throughout under ambient temperature and pressure, without high-pressure or low-temperature special operating conditions. It can also be directly compatible with existing gasoline and diesel fueling equipment to enable co-station fueling, eliminating the need for large-scale new supporting infrastructure and significantly reducing supporting construction costs for hydrogen shipping.
Meanwhile, this technology substantially improves hydrogen storage and transportation efficiency and compresses hydrogen application costs. Data show that a 30 mt-class freight vehicle carrying the liquid hydrogen storage medium can transport up to 1.5 mt of hydrogen per trip, with transportation efficiency three times that of traditional hydrogen storage models. Based on comprehensive calculations, leveraging this innovative storage and transportation technology, overall hydrogen transportation costs can be reduced to the same level as diesel and other traditional fossil fuels, completely breaking the industry pain point of high-priced hydrogen applications.
At the refueling and operations level, this new-type power system establishes a convenient and efficient circular refueling system. Vessels can directly replace the dehydrogenated liquid medium at ports and refill with new hydrogen-containing medium to complete rapid refueling, while the depleted medium can be re-hydrogenated and recycled for reuse. Huacan Ke Chairman Wang Dafu stated that this refueling model is similar to the battery swapping logic of NEVs, replacing solid-state batteries with liquid media to meet the refueling needs of long-distance vessel navigation. At present, Shanghai has completed construction of dedicated test-route hydrogen-oil fueling points; going forward, it will gradually improve the local fueling network and continue to deploy supporting stations along inland waterways.
Notably, this technology enables highly efficient circular energy utilization. The entire system requires only an operating temperature of around 200°C for dehydrogenation, and the R&D team innovatively uses waste heat from exhaust gas generated during hydrogen internal combustion engine operation to complete dehydrogenation, effectively reducing additional energy input, avoiding energy waste, and further improving full-process hydrogen utilization efficiency.
Liu Wenbo, a first-level survey officer at the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission, stated that the innovative technical route of “hydrogen internal combustion engine + organic liquid hydrogen storage,” supported by solid early-stage scientific research accumulation and technical investment, precisely aligns with the national “dual carbon” development strategy. This solution combines mature implementability with commercial promotion value, providing a new feasible pathway for the green and low-carbon transformation of inland waterway shipping, and is expected to lead the scaled and standardized development of China’s hydrogen vessel industry.
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