‘Bridge to the Future’

GS Caltex steps on the gas to tap new energy businesses

GS Caltex is going flat-out to nurture next-generation growth engine businesses in order to help the refinery proactively cope with the rapidly changing business environment.
Korea’s second largest refiner is aggressively ramping up investments in the new and renewable energy as well as new material sectors in order to conform to the government’s low-carbon, green growth paradigm and secure future growth engines.
GS Caltex named its 2010 business goal “Bridge to the Future,” indicating its determination to overcome business uncertainties by harmonizing a proper mix of conventional mainstays and new growth engine businesses.
In specific terms, it calls for continuously creating profits in the conventional business sectors, including the petrochemical and lubricant fields, while accelerating its efforts to nurture the fuel cell, thin film battery, carbon materials and resources exploration as its new growth engines.
In particular, GS Caltex established a new business headquarters under direct control of the CEO, indicating its willingness to make a strong push for the development of such businesses as the new and renewable energy and new materials sectors.
The refiner is focusing on the development and commercialization of household fuel cells and fuel cells for commercial installations as well as the accumulation of technologies related to the operation of hydrogen stations for fuel cell cars.
It is now working on the development of the next-generation thin film battery, carbon materials for electric double-layer capacitors (EDLC) and bio-fuel.
To this end, GS Caltex established the “GS Caltex New Energy Research Center” in December 2006 with a combined area of 5,940 square meters with the goal of pursuing integrated R&D activities in the new energy sector.
The research center is fitted with state-of-the-art experimentation apparatus and testing production facilities so that all integrated R&D activities related to the new energy and new materials sectors can be carried out.
GET READY FOR MASS PRODUCTION OF NEW MATERIALS ― GS Caltex has been engaged in R&D activities in the fuel cell sector for 20 years. The company has already developed a fuel-cell system with a capacity of 50kW for use in large-sized buildings and apartments as well as a 1kW-class household fuel cell using city gas and a 3kW-class household fuel cell combined cycle system. The development of a large-sized fuel cell system with a capacity of 120kW is now under way. The household fuel cell is an environmentally-friendly, high-efficiency apparatus designed to transform city gas into hydrogen, whose reaction with oxygen in the air can yield electricity and heat, and it has emerged as a next-generation energy resource, as a fuel cell has an integrated efficiency rate of more than 82 percent and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent.
GS FuelCell is a subsidiary of GS Caltex. It is aggressively participating in the government’s project to supply 10,000 household fuel cells by 2012 and the government’s plan to proliferate fuel cells in accordance with the mandatory use of new and renewable energy resources for public organizations.
GS Caltex is aggressively accelerating its research on hydrogen stations since it inaugurated the nation’s first civilian hydrogen station in Seoul in September 2007.
The refiner, which has secured related design and operation technologies while constructing and operating the hydrogen station, conducts research on hydrogen production and refining technologies.
The hydrogen station is capable of producing, stockpiling and charging 2.7 kg of hydrogen per hour. GS Caltex is test-operating system features and safety through the joint operation of fuel cell cars and household fuel cells with Hyundai Motor. The station run by GS Caltex is the first of its kind in Korea certified with a quality, safety and health management system certificate by the Korean Foundation for Quality.
GS NanoTech Co. is another subsidiary of GS Caltex specializing in the development of thin film batteries and its applied products. nw

GS Caltex Chairman Hur Dong-soo, Nippon Oil Chairman Fumiaki Watari and other dignitaries shovel the dirt to transplant a tree in celebration of the completion of a facility for manufacturing electric double layer capacitors in Gumi, part of their joint venture on March 12.