Officials from Global Tungsten & Powders Corp. cut a ribbon on Wednesday to mark the completion of a new addition to the company's Towanda plant, which will allow the company to make hydrogen gas from low-cost Marcellus Shale natural gas, the company's director of manufacturing services said.

The plant is one of the United States' largest users of liquid hydrogen, which until now has had to be trucked to the plant and then decompressed into hydrogen gas, which is the form of hydrogen that is used in the plant's industrial operations, GTP officials said.

The addition uses water and methane, which is the primary component of natural gas, to make hydrogen gas, according to officials from Air Products of Allentown, which built the addition. The water that is used to make the hydrogen gas is in the form of steam, they said.

Producing hydrogen gas on site from low-cost Marcellus Shale gas "will help to lower the cost of our tungsten products, for sure," said Jim Morse, GTP's director of manufacturing services, who added that tungsten products constitute most of the sales from GTP's Towanda plant.

"It (the addition) definitely helps," he said. "It gives us a cost advantage and keeps us profitable" which makes the jobs for the plant's 550 employees more secure, he said.

The addition will be owned and operated by Air Products, which has entered into a contract with GTP to furnish it with hydrogen gas, said Michael Cuddy of GTP.

The addition, which is a modular unit, can supply up to 32,500 cubic feet per hour of hydrogen gas for the plant, enough to meet 80 to 90 percent of the plant's needs for hydrogen gas, Cuddy said.

Besides making hydrogen gas less expensive for the plant to obtain, the addition will provide a secure source of hydrogen gas for the plant, Morse said.

GTP began to look for a way to generate hydrogen gas on site after Hurricane Katrina, which "pretty much wiped out" a Louisiana producer of liquid hydrogen, one of two plants that supply liquid hydrogen in North America, he explained.

At the time, the other supplier of liquid hydrogen, a plant in Sarnia, Ontario, was "down for maintenance," he said. "We almost had to shut our plant down" at the time, he added.

Until now, a truck from the Sarnia plant has had to transport liquid hydrogen to the GTP plant almost every day, he said.

Hydrogen gas is also used by GTP's Towanda plant to make components for solid oxide fuel cells, Morse said.

The company started manufacturing the components for the fuel cells in 2010, but the sales of those components "have not taken off as fast as we would have liked them to," Morse said.

GTP currently sells the fuel cell components to one company, California-based Bloom Energy, he said. Currently, one of the two production lines for the fuel cell components at GTP is being used, he said.

Air Products has an employee who lives in Bradford County, who will operate the hydrogen generation facility at GTP, as well as other Air Products facilities in the region, Cuddy said.

Air Products will also monitor remotely the operation of the facility, 24/7, Morse said.

GTP is a world leader in refractory powder production and development as well as high temperature metallurgy. GTP powders are used in many industries, such as the automotive, aerospace, defense, metal working, mining, and energy exploration industries.

Air Products, which is a leading industrial gases company, has been supplying liquid hydrogen to GTP's Towanda plant for over 30 years.