World’s largest liquid hydrogen tank is a model for much bigger things to come
The biggest liquid hydrogen tank in the world, a sphere 83 feet in diameter, sits at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, at the historic Launch Complex 39B, where it was completed in 2022. The previous record-holder is just a few hundred feet away. That tank, which has about two-thirds the capacity of the new addition, was built in the 1960s to support the Apollo launches.
“NASA was the largest user of liquid hydrogen in the world for many decades,” said Adam Swanger, principal investigator at Kennedy’s Cryogenics Test Laboratory. “Rockets have historically been a huge user of liquid hydrogen, but in the big scheme of things, that is a very small, niche application.”
There simply hasn’t been much of a market for hydrogen, especially in its cryogenic liquid form. That may be about to change, and the new tank at Kennedy is helping to pave the way toward a future where this most environmentally friendly of fuels plays a much larger role.
Both cryogenic tanks at 39B were built by CB&I, formerly known as Chicago Bridge & Iron Company, headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas. According to the company, lessons learned and techniques developed during this last job — and over its decades of work with NASA — will help it build even
larger tanks.