LEAP Australia shares why bankable hydrogen projects require reliable engineering, digital innovation and proven technical pathways.
The hydrogen sector is entering its commercial reality check. The projects that proceed will be those that can clear Front-End Engineering Design reviews, procurement, construction and commissioning – and still deliver on cost, efficiency and risk.
For LEAP Australia, the difference comes down to what its engineers call “engineering certainty.” By that, they mean the ability to make confident decisions using digital engineering and simulation to understand how complex hydrogen systems will behave, long before anyone pours concrete or orders equipment.
“Hydrogen plants are inherently multidisciplinary; made up of electrochemistry, power electronics, fluids, heat transfer, structures. None of these elements can be treated in isolation of each other,” says Lewis Clark, Engineering Manager at LEAP Australia.
“The way we see our customers succeed is by connecting the physics. You take outputs from one domain and feed them into another. Electronics losses become thermal loads, thermal loads become mechanical stresses, and from there, you can build a picture you can trust.”
That picture matters because the hydrogen value chain is not a single technology challenge. It is a systems challenge, where small design decisions compound into major cost and safety consequences across production, storage, distribution and utilisation.
“Simulation plays a role across the whole lifecycle, from production, storage, transport and then utilisation of hydrogen by end users. Pick any part of the process and it’s going to involve multiple physics: Fluid mechanics, mechanical, often electromagnetics. It’s all interconnected,” Clark says.
Hydrogen value chain
Hydrogen has promising potential as a clean alternative to fossil fuels, particularly in hard-to-abate sectors. But the pathway to scale is constrained by persistent barriers: Process inefficiencies, scale-up costs, safety risks, and durability issues.
Across the industry, investment has leaned heavily into hydrogen production – and for good reason. Electrolysis can produce hydrogen without carbon emissions, but it is electricity-intensive, and electrolyser components are exposed to punishing operating conditions over long periods. Meanwhile, moving hydrogen safely and cost-effectively introduces a new set of challenges: Compression energy penalties, leakage risks, materials compatibility, and the complexity of pipelines and tanks not originally designed for hydrogen’s small molecules and high-pressure requirements.
That is why LEAP Australia’s proven view is not that engineering simulation is ‘nice to have,’ but that it is foundational infrastructure for hydrogen development.
“It’s just not feasible these days to take a build-and-test approach as your primary method. You cannot hit time-to-market and budget if you’re committing to a physical prototype as your best guess and only finding out months later where the design breaks down. The virtual testing we provide clients lets them explore hundreds, even thousands, of configurations before they commit to a final design,” Clark says.
In practice, that can look like modelling electrochemistry and flow behaviour inside an electrolyser, then iterating design parameters to lift efficiency and durability before a single component is manufactured.
“You can configure your electrolyser geometry and inputs, and the simulation will report hydrogen yield, efficiency, power consumption,” Clark says.
“No one gets it right the first time. Simulation lets you parameterise the model, vary flow rates and geometry, and use optimisation tools to iterate until you hit your targets.”
Engineering commercial viability
Hydrogen’s future will ultimately be decided as much by economics as by physics – a point LEAP’s team hears repeatedly from industrial customers weighing early hydrogen pathways against lower-cost incumbent fuels.
Derik Cloete, Territory Manager at LEAP Australia, shares that the industry cannot rely on ambition alone.
“The solution can be physically viable yet commercially irrational if operating costs remain too high. The economics has to make sense,” he says.
Clark agrees and argues simulation is one of the few levers developers can pull immediately to improve both engineering performance and cost confidence.
“A lot of the value is risk mitigation. This means being able to say to your stakeholders: This is the design I’m confident in, because we’ve tested it virtually across the operating envelope,” he says.
“It is not just time and cost – simulations can provide unparalleled technical insights. Physical tests might tell you what goes in and what comes out, but simulation can show you what is happening inside the device, and why something performs well or not.”
That internal visibility becomes critical in hydrogen systems, where temperature gradients, pressure drops, material degradation and transient events can drive unexpected failures.
High-temperature hydrogen complexity
Case Study: Hadean Energy
One Australian company confronting that complexity head-on is Hadean Energy, a Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation spin-out commercialising tubular solid oxide electrolysis technology to produce green hydrogen and syngas for industrial users.
Solid oxide electrolysis operates at higher temperatures, unlocking exceptional electrical efficiency and enabling direct integration with industrial heat and steam sources. But these conditions present technical challenges, from thermal management and mechanical stress to materials behaviour and electrochemistry.
Chris Rowland, Chief Executive Officer at Hadean Energy, explains that: “Simulation allows our team to explore cell, stack, and system-level designs virtually before we build hardware, optimising for thermal management, durability, and integrating with industrial heat sources. We have achieved this while reducing our development time, costs and technical risks.”
Hadean Energy has already demonstrated its approach in real-world conditions: Its first pilot system completed more than 1000 hours of operation in a trial at BlueScope Steel’s Port Kembla Steelworks, validating the technology in an industrial setting.
Over the next few years, Hadean aims to move from pilot to early commercial deployment, including a 250-kilowatt green hydrogen demonstration project with a tier one industrial partner supplying hydrogen directly into an operating industrial process. This will be a stepping stone toward commercial-scale systems for steel, chemicals, e-fuels and materials processing.
Case Study: FCT Combustion
FCT Combustion in Adelaide has over 40 years’ experience in high‑temperature combustion, with a local team spanning engineering, research and development, and modelling/simulation.
As the hydrogen supply chain matures, FCT has seen increasing interest from industry looking to transition from fossil fuels to hydrogen‑ready burners suitable for high-temperature rotary kilns and calciners, along with fuel integration, controls and safety systems.
Renata Favalli, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Specialist at FCT explains that: “Engineering simulation plays a central role in de‑risking these transitions. Our advanced CFD and thermo‑fluid simulations accurately predict flame behaviour, heat transfer and system efficiencies. On recent retrofit projects we have significantly reduced our design iterations and the need for physical prototypes, compressing our engineering cycle by weeks and converging on a final configuration (after assessment of mixing, aerodynamics, thermal profile and process integration) with full confidence.”
The simulation advantage
LEAP positions itself as a practical bridge between advanced simulation platforms and on-the-ground engineering teams trying to deliver real equipment and projects.
Clark highlighted that LEAP’s differentiator from other companies in the hydrogen sector is that they can support customers locally.
“LEAP has the largest team of local engineers dedicated to helping customers solve such challenging simulation problems. We can be onsite, we’re in the same time zone, and we can work alongside teams as they iterate,” Clark says.
Cloete adds that hydrogen projects rarely require just one type of physics model – and few providers cover the full stack.
“There are companies who specialise in different domains such as fluid dynamics, structural integrity, control systems and electrochemistry. But there are very few companies that cover all the physics required across hydrogen applications,” Cloete says.
For hydrogen innovators, particularly startups, that breadth matters. Hydrogen hardware development is capital intensive, and physical prototyping can quickly consume budget and time.
Hydrogen plants typically involve multiple partners, vendors and engineering disciplines. In that environment, digital engineering is as much about collaboration and governance as it is about modelling.
Filip Kuttner, Group Sales Manager at LEAP Australia, framed digital engineering as maintaining a digital thread.
“This means capturing decisions from requirements through preliminary and detailed design, prototyping and trials, so teams can trace why a change was made and where to go back if optimisation is needed,” he says.
For large, complex hydrogen projects, that traceability becomes a risk-control mechanism, and increasingly, a prerequisite for investor confidence and project finance.
The next phase
The next phase of hydrogen will reward the quiet work.
Hydrogen will not become mainstream because the industry wants it to. It will become mainstream if projects can be designed, built and operated with repeatable performance, acceptable safety margins and credible economic, and engineering teams that can move faster without gambling capital on avoidable failures.
“It’s almost like a living organism. The amount of detail and the interconnections are enormous. But that is exactly why simulation matters. It lets you see the physics, iterate intelligently, and build confidence across production, storage, transport and end use,” Clark says.
As the hydrogen sector continues to search for the most commercially viable pathways, LEAP believes the winners will be the organisations that turn ambition into engineering certainty – and then practically prove it to the world.
This article was featured in ecogeneration magazine (February 2026 edition).
