QuesTek’s Executive Vice President of Market Operations Jason Sebastian recently authored an article for Energy, Oil & Gas Magazine detailing the materials challenges facing the hydrogen industry and the role that Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) can play in meeting those challenges. Here is an excerpt: 

[Embrittlement] is a major issue in the hydrogen industry right now, especially for companies building hydrogen-powered engines. For years, the approach has been to modify existing engines – those designed for gasoline or diesel – to run on hydrogen. But the materials in those engines – like cast iron or aluminum – were never built to handle hydrogen. In a cast iron engine block, for instance, hydrogen will find its way into the spaces between the iron and graphite, weakening that interface. Over time, this creates cracks that, under the pressure and heat of an engine, can lead to catastrophic failure. 

But hydrogen embrittlement isn’t just a problem in engines. It’s a major headache when it comes to hydrogen storage and transportation, too. Think about hydrogen pipelines or storage tanks. These things are under extreme pressure – sometimes hundreds of times the atmospheric pressure. That pressure drives hydrogen into the metal walls of the pipeline or tank, where it can gradually weaken the material. And if you’re cycling that pressure – going from low to high, repeatedly – that just makes things worse. You’re essentially inviting hydrogen to penetrate deeper into the material, creating tiny cracks that can grow into big problems over time. 

That doesn’t mean we need to throw out the existing materials and start from scratch. The solution lies in tweaking them. Take cast iron again. If you understand where hydrogen is going to cause the most trouble – those weak interfaces – then you can start thinking about ways to counteract it. One strategy is to add elements like tungsten to the mix. Tungsten, when added to steel, segregates to the grain boundaries and strengthens them, essentially providing a protective barrier against hydrogen’s effects. 

This is where integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) comes into play. Using this kind of physics-based digital modeling shows us how materials behave across different scales – from the atomic level to the macro scale – and helps us predict how they’ll perform in real-world conditions. It’s not trial and error anymore. With ICME, you can simulate how hydrogen will interact with a material before you even make it, saving years of experimentation.  

Read the full article at Energy, Oil & Gas Magazine.