Acrylic acid is an essential bulk chemical commodity used for the production of resins, coatings, adhesives, textile, detergents and other consumer products. It is currently manufactured on the commercial using fossil fuel-based routes, in particular from the oxidation of propylene, the latter being a major product of the naphtha and oil cracking process. The global market of acrylic acid is currently growing of 3-5% annually and the UK is responsible of consuming > 25 ktons/y with no local production capacity thus totally relying on imports from EU and Asia. On the other hand, glycerol is an abundant and cheap feedstock with yearly production of 58 tons/y between UK and Ireland. In order to reach the much sought-after goal of a carbon neutral society, the chemical industry must evolve and shift the focus on new and sustainable routes that are still able to meet current demands of key chemicals, such as acrylic acid, but with significant reduction of detrimental effects on the environment. In this context, the main goal of the SPACING project is the demonstration and scale-up of a new process for acrylic acid manufacturing using waste glycerol. This project comprises three interlinked work packages (WPs): - WP1 will involve the design, testing and characterisation of new bi-functional catalytic materials, stability test and kinetic studies, including the scale-up to 200 grams for the subsequent tests. - WP2 will focus on the development and testing of the new integrated fluidised membrane reactor. Both new experimental demonstration and long-term testing under different reactive conditions will be carried out including the benchmark and comparison of different reactor configurations. The experimental results will be used to validate the reactor model. The knowledge gained both from the experimental and numerical activities will be used as guidance for future pilot-scale demonstration of the technology. - In WP3, the SPACING process will be integrated into the acrylic acid process including feedstock pre-treatment and downstream product separation and refining. The techno-economic and environment performance of the process will be compared with commercial state-of-the-art technologies for acrylic acid manufacturing.

As individuals, our daily routines rely on plastics in their many shapes and forms, whether as long lasting components of our homes and vehicles or as essential elements of important advances in medicine, water purification and infrastructure, or as packaging for cosmetics, food, drink, toiletries, cleaning products and healthcare products. These plastics are unrivalled materials: they are inexpensively synthesised, lightweight, recyclable and often deliver unmatchable performance. However, our love of plastics comes at a significant cost, as the environmental impact of these materials is massive, and growing. Genuinely sustainable plastics will need new forms of resource efficient materials, smart supply chains, and sustainable business practices, requiring holistic and integrated solutions. This proposal brings together diverse groups from across The University of Manchester to tackle this grand challenge of plastic waste. We seek solutions to the challenge of plastics pollution through an integrated approach that explicitly couples Manchester's strength in sociotechnological understanding and influence to our industry-guided solutions across chemistry, safety, materials, engineering and social sciences. The goal is to create a concerted, focussed consortium of diverse individuals who will lead stakeholder conversations, pitch multi-disciplinary projects that build from our strengths, and incubate these projects into translatable solutions. Through these collaborative efforts we will develop 6-12 projects building from our diverse expertise in urban recycling, sustainable business models, invisible plastic waste, valorising waste plastic streams, and new degradable polymers, and through them aim to: i) reduce the need for plastic by addressing demand, ii) improve the materials used to deliver better performance and clean degradation, iii) demonstrate new methods for recycling soft and mixed plastics/non-plastic films (currently very difficulty) and removal of micro plastics from source; and iv) create smart circular economies that allow users to take ownership of and reduce plastic waste. A multidisciplinary team of researchers at The University of Manchester will lead a portfolio of projects to tackle this grand challenge. Activities will be aligned with the first-of-its-kind Greater Manchester plan to drive down single-use plastics by 2020 and use the city-region as a living lab to innovate at speed and deploy solutions at scale.

Like energy and automotive before it, UK freight transport is now on the cusp of a socio-technical transition away from fossil fuel dependency. This transition will require major investment to fleet and infrastructure, cause disruption to assets and business models, and will trigger significant reconfiguration. Whilst the scaling up of fossil phase-out is most likely to occur from the 2030s onwards, the next 10 years of investments are critical to enabling the transition, and to mitigating transition risks to the "hard to abate" freight sectors, and by association UK trade. Our concept to address this challenge is for a Network of broad but interconnected academic excellence integrated with key and leading stakeholders in freight decarbonisation, that collaboratively develops and applies knowledge and understanding of rapid freight decarbonisation. We will use this Network to collect and distil current knowledge, as well as to identify and de-risk the key remaining research challenges that can unleash significant freight-decarbonisation targeted investment and guide enabling policy. This Network connects five freight transport investments made by the EPSRC with a track record of a whole systems approach to decarbonisation of UK freight flows (international and national), and of closely integrating and embedding research with industry and policy makers alike. The Network's efforts will be guided by a number of features of UK freight transport including: (i) significant fixed infrastructure with long timescales for investment (ii) lack of consensus on the specific technological solutions for each mode (iii) a complex combination of national and international transport systems (iv) besides the road and rail network, a limited scope for public sector investment (v) Complex governance involving a mix of UK, EU and international (UN) regulation. The Network will align and integrate directly with UK government and existing initiatives including (i) Industrial strategy (ii) Clean Growth Strategy (iii) Road to zero (iv) Clean Maritime Council (v) UN agency fora (vi) World Bank's Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (vii) ongoing work on aligning investment to decarbonisation with: European Investment Bank, UK private sector institutions, IFC and IMF, and leading investment NGOs: 2 degrees investing, World Economic Forum, Global Maritime Forum, Global Shippers Forum, UK FTA. To achieve this Network's objective of unleashing significant investment for freight decarbonisation, it is organised into five multi-modal and cross-cutting thematic areas and executed through a three-step approach: Theme 1: Role of data and models for unlocking implementation decision making Theme 2: Managing macroeconomic, policy and technology uncertainty, whilst mitigating climate risk in investment decisions Theme 3: Fuel and propulsion technology pathways Theme 4: Aligning drivers for decarbonisation investment/policy with local (inc. air pollution), UK, EU and Global climate policy and integrating into private sector decision making Theme 5. Coupling the evolution of logistics with decarbonizing freight Step 1: Refinement of current knowledge and perspectives into a focused set of research questions covering each of the five themes Step 2: Commissioning of a series (~13) small projects which can develop further understanding of these questions and the methods suitable for addressing them Step 3: Distillation of the Network's knowledge, in combination with the outputs of the small projects, to produce a strategy to drive freight decarbonisation investment, and an agenda and plan describing a series of further collaboration and funding activity that can sustain the Network