We use a vast range of products directly or indirectly in everyday life. These range from soups to baby-foods to feed us; paints and coating products to provide robust structural materials; plastics and composites to create many products; and pharmaceutical drugs to fight disease. They share a similar manufacturing method in which raw materials (or reagents) are combined through physical or chemical means, and known as a 'process'. This takes place in a 'process vessel', which is often sealed, under pressure and at elevated temperature. Critical aspects of such processes are efficiency, product quality, energy use and emissions impact. The core aim of this project is to stimulate new sensing products that can enhance these aspects and exploit their markets through licences.The project builds upon our background science and experimental technology, which an estimation of the internal (invisible) distribution of process materials. These innovations harness two principles: spectroscopy - the identification of specific materials; and, tomography - the identification of the distribution of components within the process vessel (similar to methods to 'see inside' human bodies for medical diagnosis). Electrical energy using a 'compressed wide-band' is used, both to give the 'spectral' coverage and to provide fast response to suit dynamic processes. The project aims to provide a demonstration level for specific trial applications; to offer licensees a clear path for onward development into the two product forms: a 'point sensor' form, to identify materials in its immediate vicinity; and a 'zone sensor' form, to identify the distribution of specific materials. Increased knowledge empowers design and/or control to deliver major benefits to process end users: increased productivity and product quality, reductions in emissions and waste products, reduced energy demand and resulting carbon impacts. In illustration we can consider the advantages offered in two product examples. Pharmaceutical compounds are produced using crystallisation processes which are highly variable and can have poor yields such that some batches may not meet tight product specifications. This results in waste of energy, raw materials, and in the costly disposal of the useless out-of specification product. Here a Spec_zone sensor can transform 'process-knowledge' to allow 'smarter control, and gain a major increase in 'on-specification' yield, gaining obvious major benefits. These are very high value products and hence financial business savings can be large. The manufacture of foodstuffs follows a conventional recipe: such as mixing and cooking natural ingredients such as chopped vegetables in water. Unwanted objects in the product such as natural materials such as stalks and large seeds, and unnatural materials such as small pieces of metal or plastic are a possibility. Although these may be unpleasant for adults in products such as soups (but still present a serious 'brand' quality issue for the manufacturer) they may be dangerous if present in baby-foods. It is easy to find metals, using x-ray detectors on a pipeline, but much more difficult to find small objects, such small pieces of plastic or wood which can be detected by the 'wide-band' Spec_point sensor.In conclusion the ability to estimate the presence and concentration of specific materials and their distribution offers major benefits in effective process management. The project will provide demonstrations and concept details to enable licensees to develop future products, based on the Spec_point and Spec_zone concepts. It will include detailed application sectors studies to highlight potential early adopters. It is supported by two instrumentation suppliers who have expressed a keen interest in evaluation, and both have diverse markets and customers who are likely to be involved in evaluations.

The aim is to exploit a recent discovery concerning the production of a new high activity catalyst for use in the production of formaldehyde from the oxidation of methanol using a novel nanorod catalysts. These new catalysts have been protected by a patent filing. The key feature of these catalysts is that they give higher yields that the current commercial catalysts. Funding is requested to complete patent exemplification and to ensure commercial exploitation can be achieved.

Research into solid adsorbents for CO2 is motivated by their potential advantages over liquid amine, membrane or cryogenic separation techniques in mid-high temperature CO2 separation, for example, in hydrogen production via steam reforming/gasification of waste biomass where production yields are increased through the use of a sorbent powder such as CaO that chemically binds the CO2 from the mixed product stream and shifts the reaction thermodynamics to increase hydrogen output. There are also applications in large scale CO2 capture involving integration with fossil fuel fired power stations, and other industries. This materials engineering based proposal addresses the major problem facing utilisation of powder sorbents such as CaO for high temperature applications, including hydrogen production by sorbent enhanced steam reforming (SESR) of waste biomass. A decay in CO2 capture performance due to changes in the structure of the powder bed (densification) during regeneration at high temperatures prevents full exploitation of this promising technology in SESR and large scale CO2 capture applications. Significant powder densification occurs after heat-treatments at > 800 C to release CO2 and regenerate the sorbent. This leads to loss of porosity and sorbent surface area, causing a serious decay in CO2 capture performance. Developments in recent years, for example, adding refractory spacer particles are only successful for non-optimal regeneration conditions (e.g. < 850 C in inert atmospheres). The powders to be developed in this 18 month feasibility study will exploit a novel means of counteracting densification and loss of surface area, aiming to achieve regeneration at 950 C (much higher than for existing sorbents) in atmospheric conditions without significant decay in CO2 sorption capacity. An important advantage of the new powders is that a near-pure CO2 stream will be generated during regeneration at 950 C, producing output streams suited to integration with CO2 storage and/or utilisation programmes; this contrasts to the mixed gas streams generated at lower temperatures using existing materials. The new approach to the durability problem is to disperse ultrafine particles of partially stabilised zirconia (PSZ) in the sorbent matrix. The PSZ particles undergo a phase transition on cooling after regeneration which results in an increase in particle (crystallite) volume. Resulting strains generated in the surrounding, partially sintered, sorbent matrix will cause microcracks and secondary strain fields to develop which will open up pore channels for ingress of gasses. Loss of CO2 capture capacity in the subsequent sorption step will thus be mitigated, even for technologically favoured high regeneration temperatures (950 C), leading to increased multi-cycle sorbent efficiency, and increased hydrogen yield in SESR. The anti-densification mechanism will also be evaluated for an alternative CO2 sorbent, Na2ZrO3.

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.

The aim is to exploit a recent discovery concerning a new catalytic route for methanol production based on using bio-renewable feedstocks as starting materials. This new process and associated catalysts has been protected by a patent filing. The key feature is that the process opens up a wholly new route for the manufacture of methanol which is a key commodity chemical. Funding is requested to complete patent exemplification and to ensure commercial exploitation can be achieved.