“Hydrogen holds promise for clean energy but damages pipelines – scientists seek solution”

Our interview to the University of São Paulo Newspaper has been now published!

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Experiments seek to demonstrate theories about how hydrogen weakens metal structures, which could help to overcome the problems caused by it

The use of hydrogen as an energy source faces a major obstacle: damage to the metal pipes that transport it. Although the phenomenon of hydrogen embrittlement has been described for over 150 years, the theories explaining this deterioration have yet to be demonstrated experimentally. In an article published in the journal Advanced Engineering Materials, a group of researchers, with the participation of scientists from University of São Paulo (USP), review the theories on embrittlement, expose the difficulties in demonstrating it in the laboratory and propose two experiments to detect hydrogen and its effects on material structures.

‘”After production, hydrogen needs to be transported to industry and domestic consumers via pipelines. Hydrogen inevitably weakens these pipes, which can lead to serious accidents. If there is a mixture of natural gas and hydrogen in these pipes, just 1% hydrogen gas is enough to weaken them” explains physicist Matheus Tunes, assistant professor at Montanuniversität Leoben in Austria, to Jornal da USP. One of the authors of the article, Tunes is a graduate of USP’s Institute of Physics (IF). ‘There are certain strategies in the design of materials that reduce the deleterious effect of hydrogen by trapping it. But these same strategies do not guarantee that the materials will not eventually suffer degradation. Hydrogen brings to metallurgy a problem of materials operating in extreme environments.”

Read more here:

Access in Brazilian Portuguese: https://jornal.usp.br/ciencias/hidrogenio-e-promessa-para-energia-limpa-mas-danifica-tubulacoes-cientistas-buscam-solucao/

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