Reducing CO₂ and accelerating the transition to a sustainable hydrogen economy require addressing one of the major challenges, which is large-scale storage and transportation of green hydrogen. In such operations, metallic components are inevitably exposed to hydrogen-rich environments, where hydrogen is absorbed, diffuses into the bulk, and accumulates at energetically favourable sites such as dislocations, grain boundaries, and interstitial sites. Under cyclic loading or deformation, this accumulation leads to reduced ductility, brittle fracture, and eventual failure, a phenomenon known as hydrogen embrittlement.

There is a growing need to map hydrogen concentrations and migration more effectively to understand how they contribute to material degradation. This project will demonstrate multimodal X-ray-based hydrogen mapping integrated with an AI-trained detection scheme, establishing a novel technique for investigating the physics and materials science of hydrogen embrittlement.