Definition of an Experimental Set-up for Studying the Safety of Hydrogen Transport Systems

The required energy transition, unavoidable for the decarbonisation of industrial processes and economic sectors, is increasing the attention in Europe and around the world towards hydrogen. Hydrogen is an energy carrier, globally trusted to meet climate challenges, as it can store and deliver large amounts of energy per unit mass, reducing CO₂ emissions. Hydrogen can be used as a feedstock, a fuel or an energy carrier and storage and it has many possible applications in the industrial, transport, energy and construction sectors. These properties make hydrogen essential to support the EU's commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and for the global effort to implement the Paris Agreement while working towards zero pollution. For the purpose of facilitate this process, it is necessary to have a network capable of making this resource usable in a capillary, efficient and safe way. Gas pipelines, used to transport natural gas, can be exploited for the transport of pure or mixed hydrogen. It is therefore necessary to understand how hydrogen can affect the integrity and safety of gas pipelines, in order to establish whether the hydrogen/natural gas mixture is a viable and safe solution and within what ratios. Hydrogen embrittlement manifests in a loss of mechanical properties such as decreased ductility and toughness, increasing failure likelihood and gas releases, which are very dangerous, due to hydrogen ability to catch fire very easily and to the explosion hazard. The purpose of this work is the design and demonstration of a test setup for pipeline steel in a high-pressure gaseous hydrogen environment, by means of miniature hollow pipe-like specimen working at high-pressure hydrogen, in a safe and easily accessible manner with the basic laboratory equipment.