Challenges and Potentials for Additive Manufacturing of Hydrogen Energy Components: A Review

Climate change necessitates the development of sustainable energy systems, with hydrogen technologies playing a key role in this transition. Additive manufacturing (AM) offers a significant potential to enhance the efficiency of hydrogen energy components and reduce their costs through rapid prototyping, design freedom, and functional integration. This review provides the first comprehensive summary of the current state of research on the application of AM processes in the production, storage, and utilization of hydrogen. It highlights various AM processes such as powder bed fusion, directed energy deposition, fused filament fabrication and stereolithography for the advancement of hydrogen energy components. Current research trends include the material development, multi-material AM, hybrid processes, and the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning. At present, the technologies presented are mainly at a development stage of TRL 4–5. The next major step towards industrialization is the demonstration of prototypes outside the laboratory.