CB&I is now offering commercial liquid hydrogen storage tanks up to 40,000 cubic metres — roughly eight times the capacity of the tank it completed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in 2022 — and is part of a DOE-funded consortium with Shell targeting a 100,000 cubic metre demonstration unit that would be more than twenty times that size. The engineering that makes this possible was developed and validated on a US government contract. It is now available to the private sector.
What NASA Required CB&I to Solve
The Kennedy tank — an 83-foot diameter sphere at Launch Complex 39B with a capacity of approximately 4,730 cubic metres — presented construction challenges that had no existing commercial precedent. At that scale, the inner and outer spheres had to be built simultaneously on site rather than sequentially, a method that required new sequencing of labour, materials, and structural tolerances across both shells at once.
Insulation presented a separate problem. Liquid hydrogen boils at minus 423°F — cold enough to solidify any gas except helium — meaning that heat ingress through tank walls translates directly into product loss. CB&I replaced perlite, the conventional insulation material for cryogenic tanks, with glass microspheres: a material previously used as a lightweight filler but not for insulation purposes. Testing at Kennedy’s Cryogenics Test Laboratory confirmed approximately a 46% reduction in boil-off losses compared to perlite.
Steel wall thickness also required careful engineering. Exceeding certain thickness thresholds triggers mandatory post-weld heat treatment — a process that becomes significantly more complex and costly at the diameter of the Kennedy sphere. Managing that constraint across an 83-foot structure, while maintaining structural integrity and vacuum insulation performance between the walls, was a core engineering problem the project forced CB&I to solve. As CB&I CEO Mark Butts noted in the CB&I source article: the NASA work “really helped develop and demonstrate some of these large-scale construction techniques.”
Eliminating Boil-Off: The Refrigeration Breakthrough
The Kennedy tank is the first liquid hydrogen storage tank of its kind to include an interior heat exchanger, allowing it to connect directly to cryogenic refrigeration. The effect is the elimination of boil-off — hydrogen that would otherwise vapourise and escape as the tank absorbs heat from its surroundings is instead recondensed and returned to storage.
Kennedy testing between 2015 and 2016 established the economic case: every dollar spent on refrigeration electricity saved seven dollars of liquid hydrogen. That ratio reframes the capital investment in refrigeration equipment from an operational cost to a straightforward arbitrage. Adam Swanger, principal investigator at NASA Kennedy, described the outcome in the NASA Spinoff account as being about “gaining control, which has a positive ripple effect on the entire enterprise.”
The scale of the problem this solves is significant. A NASA analysis of thirty years of Space Shuttle liquid hydrogen supply found that approximately half of all hydrogen purchased was lost — through boil-off during storage, transfer losses, and other modes across the propellant supply chain. For commercial hydrogen infrastructure, where delivered cost per kilogram is the critical variable, eliminating that loss at the storage stage changes project economics materially. The same boil-off elimination technology that proved out at Kennedy is now a standard design feature in CB&I’s commercial liquid hydrogen storage tanks.
From Kennedy to Commercial Scale
The Kennedy sphere was always a stepping stone. CB&I’s CB&I profile tracks a company that has built cryogenic storage infrastructure across LNG, ethylene, and propane for decades — the liquid hydrogen work extends an existing capability into a more technically demanding application. The commercial tank offering of up to 40,000 cubic metres is the direct product of that development path.
The more significant data point is the 100,000 cubic metre consortium target. CB&I, Kennedy Space Center, and Shell are working under DOE funding toward a demonstration tank at that scale — a unit that would represent a step-change in what hydrogen export and import infrastructure can look like. The global tank terminals sector is already tracking liquid hydrogen as a future commodity handled at terminal scale; the question has been whether storage infrastructure could be engineered and financed at the volumes that meaningful trade requires. A validated 100,000 cubic metre unit changes that calculation.
The parallel with LNG infrastructure is instructive. The world’s largest LNG terminals store hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of cryogenic product across multiple tanks — the engineering frameworks, contractor experience, and financing structures for that asset class developed over decades as trade volumes grew to justify them. Liquid hydrogen is earlier in that curve. The work CB&I has done at Kennedy, and the commercial tank sizes it can now offer, suggests the curve may compress. Among major LNG projects in 2026, several include hydrogen co-development components — infrastructure that will require exactly the kind of large-scale liquid hydrogen storage tanks now moving from NASA prototype to commercial catalogue.
What Commercial Liquid Hydrogen Storage Now Looks Like
The engineering breakthroughs from Kennedy — glass microsphere insulation, simultaneous dual-sphere construction, interior heat exchangers, vacuum wall systems — are no longer one-off solutions developed for a government client. They are transferable, validated, and available at commercial scale. CB&I is the only contractor with direct construction experience on a tank of this type at this diameter.
For terminal developers, project developers, and energy companies building hydrogen export or import infrastructure, the key shift is that liquid hydrogen storage tanks at 10,000 to 40,000 cubic metres are now within the design envelope of a commercial project. The 100,000 cubic metre demonstration, if delivered, extends that envelope further still. The engineering answers exist. The question for the sector is whether the commercial demand arrives at the pace the infrastructure investment requires.
What is the world’s largest liquid hydrogen storage tank?
The world’s largest liquid hydrogen storage tank is an 83-foot diameter sphere at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39B, with a capacity of approximately 4,730 cubic metres. It was completed in 2022 and built by CB&I. A previous CB&I-built tank at the same complex, constructed in the 1960s for the Apollo programme, held roughly two-thirds of that capacity.
Who built the liquid hydrogen tanks at NASA Kennedy Space Center?
Both the current and previous liquid hydrogen storage tanks at NASA Kennedy Space Center were built by CB&I (formerly Chicago Bridge & Iron Company), headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas. CB&I has built cryogenic storage infrastructure across LNG, ethylene, propane, and hydrogen applications for decades.
How does CB&I eliminate boil-off in liquid hydrogen storage tanks?
CB&I’s liquid hydrogen storage tanks include an interior heat exchanger that connects to cryogenic refrigeration, recondensing hydrogen vapour back into liquid before it can escape. Kennedy Space Center testing between 2015 and 2016 found that every dollar spent on refrigeration electricity saved seven dollars of liquid hydrogen — establishing a clear economic case for the technology.
What commercial liquid hydrogen tank sizes is CB&I now offering?
CB&I is offering commercial liquid hydrogen storage tanks up to 40,000 cubic metres — approximately eight times the capacity of the Kennedy Space Center sphere completed in 2022. CB&I is also part of a DOE-funded consortium with Shell and Kennedy Space Center targeting a 100,000 cubic metre demonstration tank, which would be more than twenty times the size of the Kennedy unit.
Why does liquid hydrogen storage matter for the energy transition?
Liquid hydrogen must be stored at minus 423°F, making tank design and insulation critical to preventing boil-off losses. A NASA analysis of thirty years of Space Shuttle propellant supply found that approximately half of all liquid hydrogen purchased was lost through boil-off and transfer. At commercial scale, eliminating those losses through refrigeration-connected storage tanks changes project economics significantly — and large-scale storage infrastructure is a prerequisite for hydrogen export and import trade at meaningful volumes.