The Silver Medal Award is the second highest honor conferred by the Department of Commerce. It recognizes exceptional performance characterized by noteworthy or superlative contributions that have a direct and lasting impact within the Department.
Andrew Slifka and Elizabeth Drexler were recognized for providing the ASME hydrogen pipeline code committee the scientific basis for revising its design and construction codes, reducing the material and labor required for new hydrogen pipelines while maintaining safe operation. The work showed that higher-strength steels could be used in hydrogen with no reduction in fatigue performance. These new guidelines enable reductions in material cost between 30-45%, with associated labor cost reductions. The result is that the cost of new hydrogen pipelines has decreased by between $500,000 and $1 million per mile.