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News 25 April 2022

Event conclusions: “Energy materials for harsh operating conditions”


The fifth workshop of the EERA workshop series Energy Materials for Innovation (EM4I) 

On April 7 and 8, 2022, the 5th edition of the Energy Materials for Innovation (EM4I) workshop series took place online. With more than 80 participants, the event spanned over two days that discussed the needs in terms of materials research specific for energy technologies where operation occurs under conditions that highly degrade the properties of materials. These include high temperature, high pressure, extreme loading, contact with aggressive chemicals and irradiation environments.  

The workshop also covered issues that resonate with those addressed in previous seminars, namely accelerated innovation (development of new materials solutions), materials health monitoring, materials modelling, and advanced characterisation, but focused on the specific case of materials for harsh operating conditions. 

Besides the participation of the EERA Joint Programme in Nuclear Materials, the organising committee counted on the active involvement of members of the JPs AMPEA, Energy Storage and Geothermal Energy. 

Main conclusions 

  • In order to improve sustainability and economy of energy technologies where materials are subjected to harsh conditions, there is a need to increase the lifetime of components and the efficiency of systems. This requires to:  
  • Develop capabilities to test and qualify materials; 
  • Incorporate capabilities to suitably manufacture materials in a scalable way, with flexibility in terms of composition for the target application (to be able to replace critical materials);  
  • Expand capabilities to accelerate materials discovery and development, including not only materials performance variables, but also those related with sustainability and circularity; 
  • Apply suitable models at all stages of materials development, from production to use; 
  • Build up sufficient and qualified data for all stages of the materials and component lifecycle. 
  • Corrosion (partly erosion and wear too) are the most common problems through several applications and technologies:  nuclear, geothermal, bioenergy, thermal solar, energy storage under various forms, etc.   
  • Environments are very different, but eventually, the solutions to corrosion and erosion problems are similar: passivation, coatings, etc. FeCrAl (ferritic steel with high Cr and Al content) is clearly a cross-cutting material (although not for electrolysers). Other common materials are: high Cr stainless steels and Ni-base alloys (partly also austenitic steels). Protective coatings are almost ubiquitous, they can be of various types, but mainly consist of either Al- or Co-oxides; coatings are also used for other aims than corrosion protection (e.g., thermally driven adsorption machines). 
  • However, corrosion resistance is not enough for operation under harsh conditions: it needs to be accompanied by other properties, typically good mechanical properties.  
  • High temperature is another component lifetime limiting factor, but what high temperature is varies significantly from application to application: from 100ºC to 1000ºC. High temperature operation poses limits to several functionalities, for example continuous structural materials health is limited by the resistance of sensor, but limitations often imposed by corrosion to temperature increase minly affect system efficiency. 

About EM4I 

Starting in Summer 2021, the EERA Joint Programmes (JPs) on Advanced Materials and Processes for Energy Applications (JP AMPEA), Nuclear Materials (JP NM) and Digitalisation for Energy (tJP DfE), are organising a series of six workshops on "Energy Materials for Innovation (EM4I)". The series covers the integral stages of materials research, from discovery to scale-up productions, device development, industrial integration and sustainability, as well as cross-cutting technologies supporting these actions. 

This workshop series brings materials science to the forefront of Europe's energy research landscape, highlighting how different stakeholders (researchers, industries, and policymakers) can achieve the net-zero objectives also through concerted research and innovation efforts in this field. 

The six focused technical workshops will be followed by a final conference to be held in Brussels in the course of 2022.