Last Friday, the second meeting of the ONTZHI-II Industrial Advisory Committee took place, bringing together its members (Tubos Reunidos, ULMA, INNOMAT, TAMOIN, MUGAPE, Grupo Revenant, Barquín y Otxoa and specialist consultant Marcos Rupérez) with the consortium partners to open a new stage in the relationship between the project and the industrial community.
A more active Advisory Committee in the final stretch
Beyond the technical review, the central focus of the meeting was the role the Industrial Advisory Committee is expected to play in the project's final months. With ONTZHI-II moving into its final stretch, the consortium conveyed to the Committee the importance of its active involvement in identifying technology transfer opportunities: validating results from an industrial perspective, proposing concrete use cases, assessing adoption barriers and guiding final decisions towards real-world applications.
This approach reinforces one of the project's core objectives: ensuring that research results do not remain confined to the laboratory, but find their way into the Basque industrial sector. The Committee's participation is key to ensuring that the research aligns with the real needs of the business community.
Technical progress presented
The session included a detailed update on the status of the project's four research lines, with particular emphasis on the results obtained during the first annual period.
In the field of barrier coatings for metallic components, the first experimental results of the metal/ceramic duplex systems were presented, having achieved an adhesion rating of "very good" according to standard UNE-EN 10209. The Si-Ti based sol-gel hybrid coatings maintained their barrier properties stably throughout 240 hours of testing. In addition, CrN coatings obtained by HiPIMS technology have experimentally confirmed their barrier effect against hydrogen permeation, with advances in multilayer coatings designed for dynamic operating conditions.
As a tangible demonstration of these advances, the consortium brought to the meeting some of the test specimens developed during the first annual period: steel plates with ceramic and metallic coatings subjected to permeation and impact tests, a reminder that behind every result there are real materials being tested in the laboratory.
In the area of composite material tanks for mobility, progress was presented on the thermoplastic tape unwinding process and the development of the AFP cell for external reinforcement, as well as on UV-curable sol-gel hybrid coating formulations applicable to sustainable resins.
In the field of pipelines and hydrogen distribution systems, developments focused on the deposition of DLC coatings for internal geometries using PECVD technology, with results on the mechanical characterisation of materials exposed to hydrogen, including SSRT tests on welds under different heat treatment conditions and the first acoustic emission tests as an early detection technique for hydrogen embrittlement.
Finally, in the area of modelling and simulation, advances were presented on the use of artificial intelligence to model hydrogen adsorption processes on metallic surfaces, with preliminary results from a neural network model trained on adsorption data, and the conceptual design of the experimental system for studying the equivalence between electrochemical precharging and compressed hydrogen.
