We are proud to announce that “Circularity as Opportunity: Engineering Hydrogen-Resistant Circular Steels (CIRHY)”  has officially been approved in the highly competitive NWO Perspectief 2024–2025 round. The project represents a major step forward in the development of safe, circular and hydrogen-resistant steels, strengthening the Netherlands’ position at the forefront of green steel innovation.

The project is led by Dr. Poulumi Dey (TU Delft), with Dr. Karo Sedighiani (Tata Steel) serving as industrial co-lead, ensuring that scientific advances are tightly connected to industrial needs from day one. M2i coordinates the collaboration and supports the consortium with project management, stakeholder engagement and knowledge utilisation.

CIRHY brings together broad and complementary group of partners:

Academic partners: TU Delft, University of Groningen (RUG), Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), University of Twente (UT), KU Leuven (Belgium), Ghent University (Belgium) and the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials (MPI-SusMat, Germany).

Industrial and end-user partners: Tata Steel Nederland, Ansys, APS, SKF, NLR, ProRail, Allseas, NRG, and Bouwen met Staal (BmS).

Each industrial partner contributes specific sector expertise from hydrogen pipelines to offshore structures, aerospace, nuclear safety, railway infrastructure and rotating components, ensuring that CIRHY’s modelling framework and material solutions are validated across real-world use cases.

Solving a critical challenge in the hydrogen economy
Hydrogen is central to Europe’s climate ambitions, but hydrogen embrittlement limits the safe use of steel in hydrogen production, transport and storage. At the same time, the steel sector faces an urgent push to become more circular and more sustainable.

CIRHY tackles these two challenges at once: How can we design recycled, impurity-rich steels that are both circular and resistant to hydrogen-induced damage?

The project builds on the foundations laid by the earlier NWO-funded DeHy project (NWO project number 17889, grant 2018TTW), also led by Dr. Poulumi Dey, which established the scientific basis for understanding and predicting hydrogen–microstructure interactions. CIRHY will develop a full physics-based multiscale modelling chain from atomistic mechanisms to structural-scale fracture prediction supported by advanced experiments and digital integration. A core outcome will be validated Digital Material Cards, enabling industry to design and simulate circular hydrogen-resistant steels with confidence.

CIRHY connects naturally to M2i’s wider portfolio of green steel initiatives and represents another important step in accelerating sustainable steel development in the Netherlands. A key added value of CIRHY is that it strengthens the link between the DEPMAT programme focused on re-introducing scrap as a base-material in steel production and the Groeien met Groen Staal (GGS) program, which drives the adoption of low-carbon, circular steel in Dutch industry. By bringing these two major initiatives closer together, CIRHY will amplify their combined impact and support shared ambitions for durability, sustainability and safe hydrogen infrastructure.

Over the coming years, CIRHY will:

  • develop alloy concepts that turn recycled-steel impurities into an advantage;
  • deliver a multiscale predictive modelling framework;
  • produce digitally integrated tools interoperable with industrial platforms such as Ansys;
  • validate materials and models across six industrial demonstrators;
  • and support capacity building through dedicated training, workshops and knowledge exchange.

With its combination of scientific depth, industrial relevance and strong national and M2i network cooperation, CIRHY is set to deliver essential building blocks for a