Metallurgy Guru: Sustainable Metallurgical Science and Engineering: Materials for a Hydrogen Economy
Channel: Metallurgy Guru - Sustainable Metals & Green Steel
Date: 16/10/2020

The Role of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering for a Hydrogen Economy



For a future hydrogen economy materials science and metallurgical engineering play key roles and need to be systematically addressed, related to topics such as fuel cells, hydrogen generation, transportation, infrastructure and storage.
Fuel cells have fro instance have the potential to provide power for a very wide range of applications, ranging from de-centralized devices to large stationary electricity production and fuel cell vehicles covering the whole range of road vehicles and possibly extending to rail, marine and aviation.
The main bottleneck for achieving a viable hydrogen economy are costs of producing hydrogen from renewable sources, hydrogen embrittlement of infrastructure components, issues relating to commercially viable transportation and storage due to the low energy density of hydrogen gas, and the cost and reliability of fuel cells.
One of the big problems is hydrogen embrittlement, material properties at cryogenic temperatures (due to use of liquid hydrogen or ammonia) and permeability.
This lecture gives an overview over the state of the discussion of a future hydrogen economy and reflects the state of the art for the required infrastructure and synthesis components and the materials science required for realizing them. This lecture is only a brief introduction to the topic. A full lecture series about the role of materials science and metallurgical engineering for a hydrogen economy is given at the Max Planck Institute in Düsseldorf and at RWTH Aachen.