60 Second Spotlight on Vicki Wilkes, Darvick
Ahead of the Hydrogen Adoption Across Industries: Materials Challenges and Engineering Solutions Seminar taking place on 30 September at Cranfield University we caught up with Vicki Wilkes to hear her thoughts on the topic.
Briefly explain your current role.
I am the Commercial Director at Darvick and a lot of my time is spent attending events such as this to try and ensure we are staying up to date with what our customers need, and what is happening in the wider community.
How do you see hydrogen transforming the way we think about energy and engineering in the next decade?
I think hydrogen will be one of a range of energy solutions, it won’t be the single answer, but it will play a big role in the areas where its benefits outweigh the current financial and technical challenges. I think the impact on the wider supply chain of using hydrogen will be wide reaching, not just the OEM’s, but manufacturers of a huge range of parts (e.g. seals, valves, sensors, fasteners, coatings, fittings etc)
What do you see as the biggest challenge in hydrogen adoption?
The sensitivity of material behaviour in hydrogen to small changes in that environment (gas purity, temperature, pressure, strain)
What key innovations are still needed to make hydrogen adoption more viable?
Ongoing development of testing and validation capability, including robust standardisation of methods, measurement and analysis of the data. A wider joined up approach would also help the UK as a whole, more people combining and sharing data on generic materials such as 316L.
What is the most exciting development or trend in your area of interest in relation to hydrogen?
Working with a whole new supply chain and customers to develop test machines that can operate in hydrogen over a wide range of conditions, learning what is available to buy in, and what we have to develop ourselves in house from scratch and speaking to people as the industry capability and requirements evolve.
How important is collaboration between academia and industry in advancing hydrogen technology?
This is really important, hydrogen is such a unique challenge it is vital that the detailed understanding of the behaviours is developed alongside the applications. There is a lot of discussion around modelling, this is a key area where academia have the detailed knowledge of fundamental science and properties, and industry can work to validate the models and produce real world data.