Hardide Coatings and Cranfield University have been awarded grant funding of c.£170,000 from the Henry Royce Institute’s Industrial Collaboration Programme (ICP) to develop new applications for Hardide tungsten carbide-based coatings in the emerging hydrogen energy sector.

The project will involve extensive testing of several Hardide coating variants, using the R&D and analytical facilities of Cranfield University and the Henry Royce Institute (HRI) to evaluate feasibility of the new coating in hydrogen applications and to produce the data necessary for their commercialisation.

Dr .Yuri Zhuk, Technical Director at Hardide Coatings commented: “Hydrogen is an attractive fuel which, when burnt, only produces water and is considered the key to achieving net zero. However, the industrial scale production of hydrogen, its storage, transportation and utilisation impose several technical challenges, and are expected to require a new generation of materials and coatings. A number of Hardide coating variants have been tested in hydrogen applications at Cranfield University with encouraging results. The Henry Royce ICP funding will enable further testing to evaluate the coatings’ suitability to solve several of these challenges.”

The HRI is the UK’s national institute for advanced materials research and innovation, formed in 2015 with an initial £235 million government investment to accelerate the invention and take-up of new materials. In 2021, HRI prepared a report ‘Materials for End-to-End Hydrogen’ describing the main challenges in the production, storage, transportation and use of hydrogen. The Hardide coatings project, which will take up to five months to complete, will address some of these challenges.

Cranfield University is a British postgraduate public research university specialising in science, engineering, design, technology and management, with particular focus on the aerospace and advanced materials.