Federal government’s innovation officer for "green hydrogen" pays a visit

Member of the Bundestag Stefan Kaufmann learns about the hydrogen material research being carried out at the MPA [ Picture: Jochen Kubik] On March 30, 2021, the federal government's innovation officer for "green hydrogen" Dr. Stefan Kaufmann visited the Materials Testing Institute at the University of Stuttgart, and learned about its 40 years of experience in hydrogen material research and about how modern materials can support the implementation of the federal government's hydrogen strategy. As well as its excellent properties as an energy source, hydrogen can also diffuse into metals and change them, since a hydrogen atom is smaller than all other atoms. Even high-strength materials can lose their advantageous properties as a result of this process. This makes the material key to successfully turning hydrogen technologies into a reality. Here the MPA is building on its many years of experience in how hydrogen interacts with a wide range of materials. As far back as the 1980s, a pioneering Canadian-European research project carried out research into "Component Safety for Transporting Cryogenic Hydrogen". Even then, the idea was to produce hydrogen in a CO 2 -neutral way by using water power and to use it decentrally as a sustainable energy store.