Korea soon to be able to mass-produce environmentally friendly hydrogen automobiles

MOLIT announced its plans to amend relevant administrative standards on the manufacturing and installation of hydrogen fuel tanks 

The Republic of Korea is poised to be the first country to mass-produce environmentally friendly hydrogen fuel cell automobiles. The state-of-the-art vehicle creates interactions between hydrogen and oxygen, from which only water vapor (H2O) is emitted to operate motors.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of the Republic of Korea (Minister: H.E. Mr. Suh Seoung-hwan) announced that it will issue a notification of an administrative rule amendment regarding internal combustion engines, so as to establish ground rules for manufacturing and installing hydrogen fuel tanks for automobiles.

Under MOLIT's direction, two of its subsidiary research arms at the Korea Transport Safety Authority and the Korea Gas Safety Corporation had developed a set of assessment techniques to measure a hydrogen fuel tank's safety. The fruits of this collaboration will also be reflected in the UN World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations (WP29) that will take place at the end of this year for the formulation of a new set of rules at the global technical regulations (GTR) section.

Given a hydrogen fuel tank's nature that requires it to be charged at a high pressure of 70MPa, it needs every means for being kept at a secure and safe state at all times. MOLIT, therefore, made it mandatory that the hydrogen tank be subject to a series of safety tests on 41 areas before it is installed.

In addition, a hydrogen fuel tank, under the new set of rules, will have to go through 23 areas of installation assessment tests and 18 areas of tests for production phase assessments.

In terms of the installation as well, the new rules will enforce a much stronger measure, where a fuel tank needs to go through a wide range of safety assessment tests, on such areas as installation locations, gas leakage, erosion, and dents.

MOLIT vowed to continue its efforts to improve the safety standards of hydrogen fuel tanks and it also made it clear that it would be an active discussant at the upcoming UN WP29, especially at the GTR section under which the hydrogen vehicle safety standards will be amended and upgraded.