The CDT proposal 'Fuel Cells and their Fuels - Clean Power for the 21st Century' is a focused and structured programme to train >52 students within 9 years in basic principles of the subject and guide them in conducting their PhD theses. This initiative answers the need for developing the human resources well before the demand for trained and experienced engineering and scientific staff begins to strongly increase towards the end of this decade. Market introduction of fuel cell products is expected from 2015 and the requirement for effort in developing robust and cost effective products will grow in parallel with market entry. The consortium consists of the Universities of Birmingham (lead), Nottingham, Loughborough, Imperial College and University College of London. Ulster University is added as a partner in developing teaching modules. The six Centre directors and the 60+ supervisor group have an excellent background of scientific and teaching expertise and are well established in national and international projects and Fuel Cell, Hydrogen and other fuel processing research and development. The Centre programme consists of seven compulsory taught modules worth 70 credit points, covering the four basic introduction modules to Fuel Cell and Hydrogen technologies and one on Safety issues, plus two business-oriented modules which were designed according to suggestions from industry partners. Further - optional - modules worth 50 credits cover the more specialised aspects of Fuel Cell and fuel processing technologies, but also include socio-economic topics and further modules on business skills that are invaluable in preparing students for their careers in industry. The programme covers the following topics out of which the individual students will select their area of specialisation: - electrochemistry, modelling, catalysis; - materials and components for low temperature fuel cells (PEFC, 80 and 120 -130 degC), and for high temperature fuel cells (SOFC) operating at 500 to 800 degC; - design, components, optimisation and control for low and high temperature fuel cell systems; including direct use of hydrocarbons in fuel cells, fuel processing and handling of fuel impurities; integration of hydrogen systems including hybrid fuel-cell-battery and gas turbine systems; optimisation, control design and modelling; integration of renewable energies into energy systems using hydrogen as a stabilising vector; - hydrogen production from fossil fuels and carbon-neutral feedstock, biological processes, and by photochemistry; hydrogen storage, and purification; development of low and high temperature electrolysers; - analysis of degradation phenomena at various scales (nano-scale in functional layers up to systems level), including the development of accelerated testing procedures; - socio-economic and cross-cutting issues: public health, public acceptance, economics, market introduction; system studies on the benefits of FCH technologies to national and international energy supply. The training programme can build on the vast investments made by the participating universities in the past and facilitated by EPSRC, EU, industry and private funds. The laboratory infrastructure is up to date and fully enables the work of the student cohort. Industry funding is used to complement the EPSRC funding and add studentships on top of the envisaged 52 placements. The Centre will emphasise the importance of networking and exchange of information across the scientific and engineering field and thus interacts strongly with the EPSRC-SUPERGEN Hub in Fuel Cells and Hydrogen, thus integrating the other UK universities active in this research area, and also encourage exchanges with other European and international training initiatives. The modules will be accessible to professionals from the interacting industry in order to foster exchange of students with their peers in industry.

The drive towards more sustainable technologies relies on developing improved catalytic materials; greater activity and selectivity to desired products with ever decreasing amounts of expensive catalyst metals. Supported metal nanoparticles are a cornerstone within the field of heterogeneous catalysis; the metal support interaction aids the stability of the catalyst and promotes chemical reactions. Controlling the interface of composite structures is a key part of this synergy between metal nanoparticle and metal oxide support. Supported metal nanoparticles are most commonly prepared by the impregnation of metal oxide hosts, followed by a thermal activation. The concept of the project is to use metal nanoparticles supported on MOFs as templates. The intention is to remove the organic linkers through chemical means, i.e. by introducing strong reductants such as NaBH4, producing tailored nanocomposites. Indeed, we have recently performed a proof-of-concept study where we were able to prepare PdCu/Cu2O nanocomposites from Pd/Cu-BTC templates. The programme of work will: (i) Show how systematic variations to preparation conditions influences the composite structure. (ii) Demonstrate their importance for emerging catalytic applications in sustainable energy generation (i.e formic acid decomposition). (iii) Use advanced characterisation under process conditions to understand the formation of the composite structure and how the structures evolve during catalysis.

This research aims towards developing a technology that converts biomass derived glycerol to hydrogen with simultaneous carbon capture, using the concept of sorption enhanced steam reforming. EU currently produces approximately 6.8 billion litres of biodiesel per annum, which yields ~0.68 million tons of crude glycerol. Although a small portion of the crude glycerol is purified for pharmaceutical and food applications, the majority of it is taken as waste. With an increase in the biodiesel production in the future, the amount of waste glycerol will certainly present a big challenge. None of the published literature on hydrogen production processes from glycerol reports a combination of high glycerol conversion and high H2 selectivity, which could reduce the requirements for the purification stage. The novelty of the proposed approach is the use of in-situ removal of CO2 and ex-situ regeneration of CO2 adsorbent, thus enabling a continuous operation of the reactor, direct delivery of hydrogen at the reactor pressure, the use of relatively low capacity adsorbent, introduction of more physical heat to the reactor, and intensification of heat transfer within the reactor.The technological challenges include (i) achieve the controlled flow of adsorbent particles so that they can match with the local demand of CO2 adsorption, (ii) overcoming possible interactions between adsorbent and catalyst particles, and (iii) optimise heat transfer to and within the reactor for maximum heat integration. Other challenges include assessing the potential for tar and carbon formation, and determine the conditions which best avoid their occurrence, determining the role and fate of impurities in the crude glycerol, provide the materials life cycle analysis of the process, and take a green engineering approach to the process while achieving a high purity H2 product.

The provision of clean sustainable energy is among the most urgent challenges to society and to the global economy, and poses fundamental, exciting scientific questions. Materials performance lies at the heart of the development and optimisation of green energy technologies, and computational methods now play a vital role in modelling and predicting the structures, properties and reactivity of complex materials. UK science has an enviable position in the international field, and many key techniques and applications were pioneered here. Particular strengths of the UK community have been the ability to harness the full range of techniques from force-field to electronic structure methods, the effective exploitation of high performance computing facilities, the extensive range of applications and the synergistic relationship with experiment. All these aspects will feed into our collaborative project and, indeed, our team has leading programmes involving both technique development and applications, which exploit the latest development in computational hardware and software. The performance of energy storage and conversion devices is controlled by the atomistic and electronic processes within bulk materials, nano-structures, and across interfacial boundaries. These processes remain, however, poorly understood. The vision of this project is therefore to develop and apply predictive techniques for modelling the atomic level operation of energy materials, thereby enabling both academic and industrial communities to develop new materials for the next generations of energy devices with a step change in performance; and thereby addressing specifically the following critical technological objectives, which will push the RCUK energy agenda forward: (i) increasing the efficiency and stability of solar cells; (ii) enhancing the energy density and charge rate of lithium-ion batteries; (iii) improving the performance and lifetime of solid oxide fuel cells, and (iv) increasing the power from thermoelectric devices. To address these ambitious and exciting challenges, we require a concerted and systematic programme combining a range of state-of-the-art simulation methods with new techniques to work on the following major Themes: (a) exploration of materials; (b) nanostructures and interfaces; (c) ionic and electronic transport; and (d) new technique development. Hence, we have brought together a consortium team from the University of Bath, UCL and Daresbury, with wide and complementary experience in the field. There is no equivalent concerted programme inter-linking different expertise being undertaken elsewhere, and hence will be world-leading in this domain. Indeed, the project will ensure that the UK community remains ahead of the international competition in the field.

In the pharmaceutical industry, coatings have a very important place in manufacturing and product development. Solid dosage forms like tablets, pellets, granules etc. are typically coated in order to control the drug release within the body, and also to protect against external factors like moisture or attrition. This is often achieved through dry coating with fine powders, since this provides reduced environmental concerns (no volatile organic solvents emitted) and lower energy consumption (no subsequent drying or evaporation operations required). However, the dry coating process is wasteful in terms of coating powder used and energy input, since when the coating uniformity does not meet the requirement, the entire batch is disposed of. To mitigate this, an excess of coating powder is often used, with excessive energy input to ensure all solids are sufficiently coated. We aim to address these problems by determining for a given combination of substrates and powder coatings: (i) How is coating of a single powder layer influenced by particle properties? (ii) How should a mixer operate to provide uniform coating across the entire batch? (iii) What is the minimum energy input to ensure uniform product coating? In this research we will determine how coating is achieved on the fundamental, particle level, by controlling and manipulating the distribution of particle physical (size, shape) and surface (roughness, interface energy) properties and characterising the resulting coating quality. Coating powders are typically extremely fine and cohesive, and hence are prone to agglomerating to form large clusters. Industrial powder coating requires these coating powder agglomerates to be consistently broken down to single particles and precisely delivered to the host. We will establish how the process can be tailored to enhance the ability of the system to achieve this for any powder. By determining the underlying principles of powder coating, and the influences of material properties and process parameters, we will create a regime map for dry powder coating, which will enable industry to tune coating operations to minimise powder and energy use.