Hardide Coatings and Cranfield University Awarded Industrial Collaboration Programme funding

By Nicky Godding

18 November 2022

Share

The Business Magazine article image for: Hardide Coatings and Cranfield University Awarded Industrial Collaboration Programme funding

Bicester-based advanced surface coating technology company, Hardide Coatings and Cranfield University have been awarded grant funding of c£170,000 from the prestigious 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 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 plc, said: “Hydrogen is an attractive fuel which, when burnt, only produces water and is considered 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 Henry Royce Institute (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.

By Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe.

After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts.

She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.