The general objective of MITHRIL project is to contribute to the advancement of the steel sector in the hydrogen economy by facilitating the realization of an economic, effective, and durable hydrogen steel infrastructure. This will be achieved by developing, validating, and diffusing (with guidelines) hydrogen barrier coatings for steels in hydrogen applications. These coatings will impart hydrogen embrittlement-resistance properties which will prolong the service life and make materials capable of being used in hydrogen industry.
 SO1 – Setting up all activities The first step is to set up administrative, technical, and management activities to ensure the correct start and establish control bodies (committees) to regularly check on the project evolution. RINA-CSM, as Coordinator, leads setup and management |  SO2 – Selection of tailored specifications and experimental designs Selection of specifications tailored to: (1) the critical components, (2) the requirements of the coatings, (3) welding specifications, (4) the requirements for the testing. These specifications will be used to produce a design of the experiment for: (1) coatings development; (2) welding activities; (3) test plans; (4) validation test. |  SO3 – Ranking of lab-scale solutions The coatings deposited on small flat steel samples. Iterative optimisation of formulation and deposition parameters. Permeation tests on optimised coatings. SO4 – Upscaling The coating formulations and deposition parameters upscaled deposited on samples of complex shape and size, resembling real object. |
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 SO5 – Validation for the hydrogen pipeline sector The optimised coatings will undergo the designed TRL5 validation test. SO6 – Transferability of coating solutions toward other hydrogen-relevant sectors To assess the feasibility of applying MITHRIL coating solutions in other hydrogen sectors where permeation barriers may help, such as nuclear, automotive, domestic storage. |  SO7 – Weldability of coated samples and coat-ability of welded regions To assess the industrial potential of the coatings, they need to be tested in welding operations, and notably it is important to assess the weldability of coated samples and the “coat-ability” of welded regions. Beside conventional welding activities, Cold Spray campaigns will be performed to assess its use in welding. |  SO8– Planning activities to reach the market While the operative activities within the project will end when they reach TRL5, the final goal will always be to bring the product on the market. Thus, several tasks will be set up to plan activities beyond the end of the project so that reaching TRL9 may become feasible. Transferability to other hydrogen market sectors (automotive, nuclear) will be included. |
OVERALL STRUCTURE
The activities of the project are divided into 8 Work Packages.
In WP1, Management actions will be performed to ensure the setting up and the follow up of technical activities. In WP2, the Definition for the base materials, coating requirements, validation environment specifications and the Design for coatings development, upscaling, and test plan will take place. These definitions and designs will be fed into the Development phase. The Development of the single coatings will take place in WP3 at lab scale on small-scale flat specimen representative of the base material. The best coating candidates will undergo Upscaling in WP4, dealing with the issues of reproducibility on large scale, on greater dimensions and complex shape representative of the final object (pipeline). Specific tests will allow the Consortium to screen and optimise the scaling up of the candidate coatings. The latter will be subjected in WP5 to the specifically designed test for Validation at TRL5. It is worthy of note that two WPs are set to assess industrialisation:
(a) in WP6, optimised coatings – fed from WP3 – will be tested for transferability toward other sectors (nuclear, automotive/storage) and
(b) in WP7, upscaled coatings – fed from WP4 – will be tested for weldability so to assess valuable information for the industrial production of the coated pipelines.
Information from WP7 will be fed into WP5 for the production of the final mock-ups, which will involve welding activities. WP3–7 will constantly feed WP8 (dotted line in the figure), where Communication & Dissemination activities will take place, but also the Exploitation strategy will allow to set the foundations for bringing the MITHRIL results to market after the end of the project.
