The emerging hydrogen economy requires new technical solutions for storage and transportation of hydrogen on large scale. Besides hydrogen derivates like ammonia or liquid organic hydrogen carriers, liquefaction of hydrogen is one of the focus technologies for industrial scale transportation and storage of hydrogen. In this approach one of the major challenges is the thermal insulation of the 20 Kelvin cold liquid hydrogen (LH2). For very large LH2 storage capacities double walled spherical tanks are used. At this scale established cryogenic insulation technologies such as multi-layer insulation (MLI) or expanded perlite in double walled vacuum insulation tanks have limitations either due to the manufacturing and installation processes (MLI) or the insulation performance and mechanical robustness (perlite).

Hollow glass microspheres, co-called Glass Bubbles, are promising bulk insulation materials for large scale double walled vacuum insulated storage tanks and cargo solutions.

The poster reviews the research and development work on thermal insulation at cryogenic conditions with Glass Bubbles and puts it into perspective with other insulation solutions. The advantage of Glass Bubbles versus expanded perlite is outlined by a study on the mechanical strength and robustness of the two materials classes. Last not least an example application of Glass Bubbles in a real LH2 tank is presented.