In April of this year, Nippon Helium newly completed a helium filling plant at Shiohama, Kawasaki City (with a capital of 45 million yen invested 75% by Air Water and 25% by Mitsui & Co. Ltd.) and moved its head office to the new plant. On May 22, they held a completion ceremony inviting the participants concerned.

The new plant named “Central Plant” of Nippon Helium is the very core plant of helium business playing the role as the primary base to receive imported containers collectively as well as the supply base of helium for all the Kanto District.

Boil-off which occurs in the transportation of helium container from abroad is bound to raise the internal pressure of the container and it inevitably requires a pressure-reducing work when the liquid is trans-filled. In case of the containers imported by Nippon Helium, the gas is once removed here and then the container is transported to the five filling bases located in Hokkaido, Niigata, Aichi, Osaka and Kumamoto. You can save filling costs as each filling base does not have to reduce pressure to trans-fill helium. The removed gas is stored in the reserve tank (4 units) having a total capacity of 650m3 newly set up in the plant, and then pressurized up to 20MPa and 15MPa for delivery as gas helium packed in cylinder or curdle.

For further filling into dewars, a continual cooling device was adopted in which the cold heat of liquid helium is utilized for pre-cooling of another dewar. The technology is patent pending now. The investment for the plant amounts to 1.1 billion yen.

The new plant constructed on the former site of Kawasaki Chemicals Shiohama Plant of Kawasaki City’s Water Front group company has an approximate floor area of 2330m2, which is 2.8 times larger than the old Yokohama Plant (Tsurumi Ward of Yokohama City). It allows parking of five import containers.

Though the production capacity is 10% larger of 300Nm3/h than before, it is most characteristic as mentioned above that a filling loss-saving method has been adopted so that precious helium can be used without wasting.

In addition, the company plans to enhance the SPGs business by establishing also a new facility to fill mixture gases forming a SPGs filling base of the Air Water group.

President Hagiwara shows his wish saying, “The filling loss will be reduced by 10% bringing a cost reduction of about half a billion yen in monetary terms. We wish to accomplish the role of our key plant to become the AWI Group’s SPGs center.”　

President Kiyoshi Shirai says, “In the midst of the unforeseeable domestic demand growth in the helium market, the situation of procurement will become more serious. With the cutting edge production base to enable effective production, we plan to enhance our profitability and get more partners in the helium business so that we can make our current third position of import share ranked higher.”