• Ilyushechkin, Alex
• Carter, Lachlan
• Schoeman, Liezl
• Dziouba, Alex

Abstract

The global energy transition is currently being driven by environmental concerns over the impact of CO2 emissions on climate, and by economic concerns over energy security. Of the various options available for the energy transition, hydrogen has been studied extensively and has potential as a feasible energy carrier or chemical reactant in the pursuit of decarbonising heavy industry. The benefits of hydrogen include its ease of production from renewable sources such as wind, water and solar energy as well as its capacity to provide distributed energy needs outside of environmental variability. However, if Hydrogen is to play a significant role in the energy transition for heavy industry, then the impact of hydrogen on industrial infrastructure, systems and processes needs to be understood, quantified, and controlled. Due to the ubiquitous nature of metals in industrial infrastructure understanding how hydrogen interacts with and affects the structural properties of metals is critical to developing uses for hydrogen in heavy industry. Phenomena such as hydrogen embrittlement, or high temperature hydrogen attack, whereby exposure of metals to a hydrogen environment weakens their structural integrity through either crack formation and propagation, or chemical reactions occurring between hydrogen and trace elements within the metal are possible risks associated with industrial applications of hydrogen. This project illustrates recent advances into the understanding of hydrogen interactions with industrial materials, particularly steels exposed to high temperatures and high-pressure processes. Additionally, techniques currently used as industry standards are compared alongside laboratory research techniques in the characterisation of hydrogen embrittlement and attack.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• crack
• steel
• Hydrogen
• trace element