On April 11, Iwatani held an opening ceremony of hydrogen (H2) station for FC Forklift provided in Kansai International Airport jointly with Toyota industries Corporation of FC forklift manufacturer which engages with Osaka International Airport (Itami) as well as Kansai Airport.

Iwatani together with Toyota Industries and others was nominated for Ministry of the Environment’s “Reinforcement Inducing Technological Development and Demonstration Program for Reduction of CO2 Emission – 2014” and was participating in the FC Forklift utilizing tests inside the Kansai Airport from 2015 to 2017 playing the role of supplying hydrogen by small-scaled filling facilities or cylinders.

After completing the program, three parties (Iwatani, Kansai Airport and Toyota Industries) started their verification tests from April 2017 aiming for more FC Forklift operating examinations. At the opening ceremony this time, an enlarged station was presented which can fill 400 FC forklifts per day with the storage of liquefied H2.

Half of the construction cost amounting to about 1.3 billion was subsidized by the Ministry of the Environment and the other half was said to have been borne by the three companies. As for the operation cost including the supply of liquefied hydrogen, the three parties are also going to share.

Kansai Airport is now using six FC forklifts and 400 battery forklifts. Yoshiyuki Yamatani president of Kansai Airport said in his greeting speech at the ceremony, “In the future we would like to change all the 400 forklifts of battery type into FC-driven ones.”

Mitsuhiro Tanimoto president of Iwatani talked about the future saying, “Following the completion of large-sized hydrogen infrastructure using liquefied hydrogen, we would like to contribute to applying FC to towing tractors for airplanes other than the FC forklifts.”

The facilities of the new station include a liquefied H2 tank capable to store 24 m3, two units of 300 Nm3/h compressor made by Kaji Technology, three units of 300ℓ accumulator made by Benkan Kikoh and three units of dispenser made by Iwatani.

One unit out of the three is installed in the premises of CKTS which is engaged in loading of baggage into airplanes, and gas is supplied through a high-pressure H2 piping of 100 meters long.

Photo: 100m piping and H2 dispenser