Industrial/Technological/Economical benefits
MITHRIL will bring products upscaled for the specific sector, i.e., the HPB coatings applied with specifically designed technologies applicable on steel pipeline internal walls (e.g., PE-CVD). Steel is vital to modern economies and is deeply engrained in our society. The iron-and-steel sector is currently responsible for about 8% (917 Mtoe per year) of global final energy demand and 7% of energy sector CO2 emissions including process emissions (2.6 GtCO2 per year). Steel will play a key role in the upcoming hydrogen economy where great challenges are foreseen in the storage and transportation. In fact, metallic-based high-pressure tanks and “transportation” pipelines have problems with hydrogen due to the embrittlement phenomenon, which significantly affects ductility properties of a material, leading to cracks, equipment damage, hydrogen leakage, failure, and even explosion. Through innovation and resource efficiency, steel producers have a major opportunity to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse emissions, while developing more sustainable products and enhance their competitiveness. To meet global energy and climate goals, emissions from the steel industry must fall by at least 55% within 2030 to contribute to the European Green Deal final goal of making EU carbon neutral by 2050. Mitigation strategies in the sector see material efficiency and the hydrogen transition as responsible to reduce cumulative direct emissions by 40% and 8%, respectively, which is very close to the 50% target.
Scientific benefits
MITHRIL Project will create new high-quality knowledge and strengthen skills on HPB coating synthesis, deposition, and welding. It will contribute to scientific advances in the fields of deposition processes, instruments and technologies (e.g., application of PE-CVD and electroless plating), modelling software, coated steels welding. The Project will foster diffusion of knowledge, by adopting when possible Open Access publications, which will allow the research to be more accessible, more viewed, and more cited thus contributing to the breakthrough of MITHRIL technologies and abbreviating the adoption time of methodologies and processes on a large scale.
Societal & Environmental benefits
MITRHIL addresses climate change and its effects on European and global scale. The adoption of HPB coatings will advance the European hydrogen pipeline 2030 strategy which will allow emissions reduction across industry and transport, and – if hydrogen will also be used as a low-carbon substitute for natural gas – will allow the decarbonising of the residential heating sector. Moreover, the awareness of hydrogen permeation barrier coatings will increase the general public safety perception and acceptance of hydrogen in transport and storage sectors, currently affected by a halo of explosion risks.
However, not only the perception but also the safety reality will increase, reducing the real hazards linked to hydrogen operations in steel industry (and not only). In fact, due to hydrogen high sensitivity to detonation, risks include potential damage to property such as industrial facilities, as well threats to health and safety, and the environment. HPB coatings will diminish these hazards and thus positively affect the workers in the steel sector that in the near future will work closely with hydrogen. As of 2022, the EU steel industry supports 2.491 million jobs and creates 134.5 billions of GVA.
The foreseen barriers hampering the outcomes and impacts of MITHRIL are more linked to hydrogen economy than not directly to HPB coating deployment. Notably, despite multiple driving forces, the hydrogen transition and everything related – HPB coatings included – are yet to materialize due to an array of barriers, which must be tackled in parallel to deploy hydrogen at scale.
