STFC announces 4 new projects aimed at solving energy challenges
24 Jun 2014 12:53 PM
STFC is pleased to announce the awarding of up
to £1.5M of funding to 4 exciting multi-disciplinary projects under the
Challenge Led Applied System Programme (CLASP) to meet specific challenges in
the energy sector. These projects plan to produce tangible results in a 3-5
year period and bring STFC researchers together with other academic disciplines
and industry through new collaborations to solve real energy
challenges.
CLASP project calls
STFC runs an annual Challenge Led Applied Systems
Programme (CLASP) call for proposals with each call focusing on a grand
challenge area where new technology emerging from STFC’s research base
can be applied through collaborative work with other researchers and industry
to meet challenges aligned to the Futures programme; Energy, Environment,
Healthcare and Security.
The
successful projects for the 2013 Energy Call are:
- Dr H Hunter (STFC Labs)
Grant Title: Ammonia Reactor for Cracking (ARC)
- Project Summary
By 2050 the UK is legally obliged under the Climate Change Act to
reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80%, from 1990 baseline levels.
Among a number of potential options one promising route is the implementation
of the hydrogen economy in which hydrogen (H2) is produced by the electrolysis
of water using low carbon energy sources and then, using a fuel cell or through
combustion, converted to water and energy. H2 is therefore one of the primary
energy vectors that offers a serious alternative to fossil fuels. Target
markets include transportation, renewable energy generation/back-up and remote
power supply sectors.
Two major challenges prevent the widespread
implementation of the hydrogen economy: The lack of a cheap and effective
method of H2 storage and the absence of sufficient infrastructure for its
production and transportation. A viable solution to both these challenges lies
in the use of ammonia as a clean and secure H2-containing energy
vector.
This project will create a first demonstrator system for
a new hydrogen production method, aimed at eventual use in
fuel.
- Dr D Jenkins (York)
Grant Title: New generation nuclear detectors for use in well
logging
- Project Summary
Well logging is a key tool for oil and gas exploration, where the
composition and structure of strata are probed by introducing instruments down
a borehole. Radiation detection is important to this type of approach but is
challenging as it must perform highly in an environment with strongly elevated
temperatures. The project will evaluate the potential for silicon carbide-based
APDs as a platform for such radiation detectors when coupled to appropriate
scintillator crystals.
- Dr M Riede (Oxford), Dr R Dalgliesh (STFC Labs)
& Dr C Nicklin (Diamond Light Source)
Grant Title: Structure-Property Relationships: Enabling a faster
Commercialisation of Organic Solar Cells
- Project Summary
Organic electronics (OE), including organic solar cells (OSCs), is a
prime example of an interdisciplinary research field. Chemists, physicists,
material scientists and engineers are working together in theory and experiment
to better understand the intriguing properties of organic semiconductors and
come up with novel applications. Common for all OE is that the chemical
structure and the processing of organic semiconductors have significant
consequences on the thin film microstructure which in turn has significant
influence on the device properties.
This is where the focus of this project is. It will lead
to advances in the understanding of the structure-property relationships of
organic semiconductors, an interdisciplinary field that has become more and
more important in recent years. This project will strengthen the complete value
chain of OE in the UK in all disciplines from the development of new organic
molecules to the optimisation of OSC and other devices.Based on the
project's results, chemists will get a better understanding on how organic
semiconductors pack in thin organic films that are the basis of all current
organic electronic devices.
This will enable them to derive selection criteria to
choose from the nearly unlimited choices and focus on the development and
optimisation of the most promising molecules for particular purpose. Material
scientists, physicists and device engineers will learn from our data how
particular processing conditions affect the film formation of organic
semiconductors thus providing them the tools to faster optimise the process to
obtain the desired microstructure and optimised performance of the
device.
This project also includes high-level scientific
training of one PDRA in processing of OSCs and OE and the microstructural
analysis. Additionally, this project will add critical mass to vacuum
processing for OE in the UK, complementing the existing excellent and
interdisciplinary research on solution processed OE. Researching both solution-
and vacuum-based technologies is paramount for the UK to be able to capitalise
on its expertise in OE in the future, because it is far from certain which
approach -vacuum or solution - will dominate the field of OE in the years to
come, or whether a combination of both.
- Dr D Weidmann(STFC Labs) & Dr D Jones (NERC
BGS)
Grant Title: Large area two dimensional mapping of carbon dioxide
fluxes for assessment and control of carbon capture and storage
projects
- Project Summary
As part of the development of carbon storage and sequestration (CSS)
facilities towards a viable business, site characterization and validation is
required. Any field CCS facility needs to implement monitoring, verification,
and accounting activities in order to verify storage permanence. In addition,
technologies and associated protocols are needed to quantify potential
releases, to study the pathways of these as well as their anticipated impacts.
Research has modelled the effects of CO2 leakage and found that leakage rates
below 0.5% per year are required to keep CCS economically and environmentally
viable.
The hereby proposed project is to develop a novel
technology called Chirped Laser Dispersion Spectroscopy (CLaDS) to address some
challenges of the CCS monitoring problem. It specifically focuses on the near
surface atmospheric component of a monitoring system to account for CO2 surface
fluxes. This unique and novel technology has the potential to enable large area
gas fluxes mapping at unprecedented precision, though the combination of
open-path monitoring with tomographic techniques.
The project focuses on developing a field prototype that
will be deployed for a realistic CO2 flux mapping campaign towards the end of
the activity. This demonstration will exhibit the benefit of this new
technology and facilitate barrier.
A
new CLASP Healthcare call for 2014 with a £1.5M fund
has been announced. An Information & Networking day was held on 20th May at
the Royal College of Physicians to allow potential applicants to find out more
about the focus of the call and to meet possible new
collaborators.
Details can be found at STFC
Clasp Healthcare 2014.