The 2008 Climate Change Act sets a legally binding target of 80% CO2 emissions reductions by 2050. To meet this challenge the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) issues regular carbon budgets with recommendations on the way in which the UK needs to reduce its emissions. In its 2010 4th carbon budget, there is a clear plan for power sector decarbonation to 2030, by investing in 30-40 GW of low carbon capacity with a value of the order of £100 billion. This would drive average emissions from generation down to around 50gCO2/kWh by 2030 and includes 4 CCS demonstration plants by 2020. The CCC recognises the key role for the UK of gas fired power plants: 46% of current electricity generation and 35% of emissions are from gas. It also identifies CCS retrofit as an attractive option for existing CCGT plants, indicating that 20GW of plant currently on the system would be suitable for retrofit in the 2020s, together with any plant added over the next decade (10-15 GW). CCGT plants are likely to contribute 25% of electricity generation in the 2030s. Roughly 2/3 of CCS costs lie in the capture process and it is here that the greatest opportunities for savings lie. Therefore, the Government is supporting research to develop improved and lower cost processes and equipment and this proposal is directly aligned with this aim in order to support the UK economy and help the UK take the lead in this emerging technology over the next 10 to 20 years. In line with the CCC recommendations the focus of this proposal is on capture technology for retrofit to existing CCGT plants. We propose to develop next generation enhanced capture technology and in particular reduce plant size through novel advanced adsorbents and the optimisation of fast cycle thermal regeneration using rotary wheel adsorbers. Research challenge - The key challenge in post combustion capture from gas fired power plants is due to the low CO2 concentration in the flue gas, approximately 4% by volume. This means that conventional amine processes will have a large energy penalty and the presence of high concentration of oxygen leads to high amine deactivation rates. Novel adsorbents and adsorption processes have the potential to improve the efficiency of the separation process. Given the very low CO2 partial pressure in the flue gas, the selection of novel adsorbents is very different from the equivalent approach to coal fired power plants. The adsorbents will have to have a very high selectivity to achieve good capture capacity with dilute mixtures. As a result these materials will have to be based either on very strong physisorption or chemisorption and the regeneration will have to be by thermal cycling. This poses the engineering challenge of developing a process that will achieve rapid thermal swings of the order of a few minutes, which is over an order of magnitude faster than traditional Thermal Swing Adsorption (TSA) fixed bed processes. We plan an ambitious programme of work that will address both materials and process development for carbon capture from gas fired power plants.

Chemical technologies underpin almost every aspect of our lives, from the energy we use to the materials we rely on and the medications we take. The UK chemical industry generates £73.3 billion revenue and employs 161,000 highly skilled workers. It is highly diverse (therefore resilient) with SMEs and microbusinesses making up a remarkable 96% of the sector. Today's global chemicals industry is responsible for 10% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and consumes 20% of oil and gas as carbon feedstock to make products. Decarbonisation (defossilisation) of the chemicals sector is, therefore, urgently required, but to do so presents major technical and societal challenges. New sustainable chemical technologies, enabled by new synthesis, catalysis, reaction engineering, digitalisation and sustainability assessment, are needed. In order to ensure that the UK develops a resource efficient, resilient and sustainable economy underpinned by chemical manufacturing, developments in chemical technologies must be closely informed by whole systems approaches to measure and minimise environmental footprints, understand supply chains and assess economic and technological viability, using techniques such as life cycle assessment and material flow analysis. Lack of access to experts in science and engineering with a holistic understanding of sustainable systems is widely and publicly recognised as a significant risk. It is therefore extremely timely to establish a new EPSRC CDT in Sustainable Chemical Technologies that fully integrates a whole systems approach to training and world leading research in an innovation-driven context. This CDT will train the next generation of leaders in sustainable chemical technologies with new skills to address the growing demand for highly skilled PhD graduates with the ability to develop and transfer sustainable practices into industry and society. The new CDT will be a unique and vibrant focus of innovative doctoral training in the UK by taking full advantage of two exciting new developments at Bath. First, the CDT will be embedded in our new Institute for Sustainability (IfS) which has evolved from the internationally leading Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies (CSCT) and which fully integrates whole systems research and sustainable chemical technologies - two world-leading research groupings at Bath - under one banner. Second, the CDT will operate in close partnership with our recently established Swindon-based Innovation Centre for Applied Sustainable Technologies (iCAST, www.iCAST.org.uk) a £17M partnership for the rapid translation of university research to provide a dynamic innovation-focused context for PhD training in the region. Our fresh and dynamic approach has been co-created with key industrial, research, training and civic partners who have indicated co-investment of over £17M of support. This unique partnership will ensure that a new generation of highly skilled, entrepreneurial, innovative PhD graduates is nurtured to be the leaders of tomorrow's green industrial revolution in the UK.

Taken together the imaging Facilities on the Rutherford Campus will be without equal anywhere in the world. The suite of synchrotron X-ray, neutron, laser, electron, lab. X-ray, and NMR imaging available promises an unprecedented opportunity to obtain information about material structure and behaviour. This infrastructure provides an opportunity to undertake science changing experiments. We need to be able to bring together the insights from different instruments to follow structural evolution under realistic environments and timescales to go beyond static 3D images by radically increasing the dimensionality of information available. This project will use many beamlines at Diamond and ISIS, combining them with laser and electron imaging capability on site, but especially exploiting the 3.3M investment by Manchester into a new imaging beamline at Diamond that will complete in Spring 2012.Traditionally a 3D images are reconstructed from hundreds or thousands of 2D images (projections) taken as the object is rotated. This project will:1) Deliver 3D movies of materials behaviour. 2) Move from essentially black and white images to colour images that reveal the elements inside the material and their chemical state which will be really useful for studying fuel cells and batteries.3) Create multidimensional images by combining more than one method (e.g. lasers and x-rays) to create an image. Each method is sensitive to different aspects.4) Establish an In situ Environments Lab and a Tissue Regeneration lab at the Research Complex. The former so that we can study sample behaviour in real time on the beam line; the latter so that we can study the cell growth and regeneration on new biomaterials. A key capability if we are to develop more effective hard (e.g. artificial hip) and soft tissue (artificial cartilage) replacements.These new methods will provide more detail about a very wide range of behaviours, but we will focus our experiments on materials for Energy and Biomaterials. In the area of energy it will enable us to:Recreate the conditions operating inside a hydrogen fuel cell (1000C) to find out how they degrade in operation leading to better fuel cells for cars and other applicationsStudy the charging and discharging of Li batteries to understand better why their performance degrades over their lifetime.Study thermal barriers that protect turbine blades from the aggressive environments inside an aeroengine to develop more efficient engines.Study the sub-surface corrosion of aircraft alloys and nuclear pressure vessels under realistic conditions improving safetyStudy in 3D how oil is removed from the pores in rocks and how we might more efficiently store harmful CO2in rocks.In the area of biomaterials it will enable us to recreate the conditions under which cells attach to new biomaterials and to follow their attachment and regeneration using a combination of imaging methods (laser, electron and x-ray) leading to:Porous hard tissue replacements (bone analogues) made from bio-active glasses with a microstructure to encourage cell attachmentSoft fibrous tissue replacements for skin, cartilage, tendon. These will involve sub-micron fibres arranged in ropes and mats.Of course the benefits of the multi-dimensional imaging we will establish at Harwell will extend much further. It will provide other academics and industry from across the UK with information across time and lengthscales not currently available. This will have a dramatic effect on our capability to follow behaviour during processing and in service.

Graphene and its derivatives exhibit unprecedented combinations of properties: tuneable electrical and optical response, high intrinsic mechanical response, chemical versatility, tuneable permeability, extremely high surface area >3000m2/g... The incorporation of graphene in practical devices will open new technological opportunities in a wide number of technologies such as catalysis, supercapacitors, membranes and multifunctional polymer and ceramic composites. In order to combine optimum functional and mechanical properties, these devices will often have complex structures with characteristic features at multiple lengths scales from the nano to the macro level. For example, foams with open micro-scale porosity to allow gas access and nano-scale pores to enhance surface area, membranes that will combine ceramic supports with graphene layers of controlled permeability or multilayer structures with layer thickness ranging from micro to nanolevels. The scientific and engineering challenge is the development of manufacturing approaches to build these devices in a reliable and cost-effective manner. Wet-processing techniques based on the use of liquid particulate suspensions, or solutions have made very significant advances in the last years. They are reliable, robust, and efficient. Now they are using to build materials with increasing degrees of precision, down to nano-levels and are having an increasing impact in a wide range of technologies. With the advent of solution processable graphene, we strongly believe that there is an often overlooked opportunity to develop wet processing technologies to build graphene-based devices. However, the development of these techniques will depend on two key issues: establishing a reliable path for the large scale synthesis of powders with controlled size and chemistry and understanding the basic physicochemical parameters that determine the response of graphene suspensions. This project puts together a multidiscilplinary team with the objective to develop new wet-processing manufacturing approaches to build graphene-based 3D structures for selected technological applications. The project will cover basic scientific and engineering aspects such as powder synthesis and the basic analysis of the physicochemical parameters that control the response of colloidal suspensions of two dimensional materials. We plan to use a coordinated approach that by simultaneously developing a suite of processing approaches (from emulsification, 3D printing, layer-by-layer deposition, aerogels...) will be able to define and address the many common scientific and engineering issues and generate a synergistic effect that will push technological development. An essential part of our approach is the emphasis on specific technological applications (supercapacitors, membranes, electrochemical devices...). This emphasis will serve to focus the development of our manufacturing approaches towards specific goals, providing clear directions for structural manipulation and enhancing tremendously the technological impact of this project. By systematically analyzing the performance of our structures in these applications we will also define the key principles that should guide the design of graphene-based devices in order to optimize their functional and mechanical response. This project will break new ground and uncover new scientific principles and technologies that will have a lasting impact not only on the implementation of graphene but also for a whole new family of emergent two dimensional materials whose unique properties are poised to change the way we design and build devices for a wide range of fields in the upcoming years.

Materials and structures in many engineering systems are often subject to dynamic loads, which place challenging constraints and requirements on their design and manufacturing. For example, aerodynamic loads can induce significant vibrations of bladed disks of turbo-machinery potentially causing high cycle fatigue, with major implication on the cost, safety, and reliability of engines, significant efforts are regularly necessary during design to prevent the vibration problems. A wide range of research studies have been conducted to address these challenges with current activities mainly focusing on the development of more advanced and effective techniques for finite element modelling, simulation, and optimization. These are gradually extending the framework of the current state-of-the-art, but one of the main challenges remain, which is: "how to produce a high-fidelity reduced order model and conduct the reduced order model-based design for engineering materials and systems that need to withstand demanding dynamic loads". In order to fundamentally resolve the challenges, this project will develop an innovative digital manufacturing methodology based on the complex systems science and demonstrate the effectiveness and significance of the novel method in three case studies supported by the end users and stakeholders in the UK, including Rolls-Royce plc, Wilson Benesch (sound/acoustics), Thomas Swann Ltd (nanomaterials), MS Research (charity), TISICS (metal matrix composite design and manufacturing), Carter Manufacturing (bearings for railway applications), and MSC Software (digital manufacturing software). The project involves a close multidisciplinary collaboration between the researchers in system and control, mechanical and structure engineering, and materials science from University of Sheffield, University of Bristol, Imperial College, and University of Derby. The achievements are expected to significantly facilitate the fulfilment of the EPSRC vision for Manufacturing the Future, resolving serious challenges related to digital manufacturing and more effectively addressing high-value and specialist design and manufacturing of aerospace systems, advanced materials, and next generation railway system components. These can potentially produce significant benefits to future design and manufacturing activities centred around core UK plc industries.