Heating and cooling are essential to our lives. We rely on them for comfort in our homes and vehicles, and businesses need heating and cooling for productive workplaces and industrial processes. Taken together, space and process heating and cooling represent the biggest contribution to the UK's energy consumption, and the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Heating is primarily provided from burning natural gas, whereas cooling is primarily provided from compressing volatile fluorinated gases. However, these conventional technologies are neither efficient, not friendly to the environment. Barocaloric effects are reversible thermal changes that occur in mechanically responsive solids when subjected to changes in pressure. These effects are analogous to the pressure-induced thermal changes in gases that are exploited in current heat pumps, but they promise higher energy efficiencies and obviate the need for harmful greenhouse gases. We aim at developing an energy-efficient barocaloric heat pump based on novel barocaloric hybrid composite materials that combine the best properties of organic barocaloric materials, namely extremely large pressure-driven thermal changes, and the best of inorganic barocaloric materials, namely high thermal conductivity and low hysteresis. A technological transformation of this magnitude will require the development of bespoke economic and policy strategies for its successful deployment. Therefore, we aim at developing a fully integrated bespoke economic and policy strategy that will support the innovation of BC heat pumps through to commercialisation. The achievement of heat pumps that operate using barocaloric materials instead of gases will permit decarbonising heating and cooling, provide energy independence, and enable the UK to become the world leader on this emerging technology.

This proposal will deliver novel, integrated methodologies for the design and scalable manufacture of next generation resorbable polymer nanocomposites, linking the science and engineering principles which underpin successful processing of such materials. This will enable new smart health-care materials in applications from bone fracture fixation to drug delivery. The methodologies will be optimised on a system comprising novel nanoparticles, selected blends of medical-grade degradable polymer and specifically designed molecular dispersants. Optimised methodologies will be applied at scale on industrial equipment to produce demonstrator resorbable implants with specific structural attributes and degradation timescales. Wider applications include degradable food packaging and products requiring end-of-life disposal.

Chemical separations are critical to almost every aspect of our daily lives, from the energy we use to the medications we take, but consume 10-15% of the total energy used in the world. It has been estimated that highly selective membranes could make these separations 10-times more energy efficient and save 100 million tonnes/year of carbon dioxide emissions and £3.5 billion in energy costs annually (US DoE). More selective separation processes are essential to "maximise the advantages for UK industry from the global shift to clean growth", and will assist the move towards "low carbon technologies and the efficient use of resources" (HM Govt Clean Growth Strategy, 2017). In the healthcare sector there is growing concern over the cost of the latest pharmaceuticals, which are often biologicals, with an unmet need for highly selective separation of product-related impurities such as active from inactive viruses (HM Govt Industrial Strategy 2017). In the water sector, the challenges lie in the removal of ions and small molecules at very low concentrations, so-called micropollutants (Cave Review, 2008). Those developing sustainable approaches to chemicals manufacture require novel separation approaches to remove small amounts of potent inhibitors during feedstock preparation. Manufacturers of high-value products would benefit from higher recovery offered by more selective membranes. In all these instances, higher selectivity separation processes will provide a step-change in productivity, a critical need for the UK economy, as highlighted in the UK Government's Industrial Strategy and by our industrial partners. SynHiSel's vision is to create the high selectivity membranes needed to enable the adoption of a novel generation of emerging high-value/high-efficiency processes. Our ambition is to change the way the global community perceives performance, with a primary focus on improved selectivity and its process benefits - while maintaining gains already made in permeance and longevity.

Membranes offer exciting opportunities for more efficient, lower energy, more sustainable separations and even entirely new process options - and so are a valuable tool in an energy constrained world. However, high performance polymeric, inorganic and ceramic membranes all suffer from problems with decay in performance over time, through either membrane ageing (membrane material relaxation) and/or fouling (foreign material build-up in and/or on the membrane), and this seriously limits their impact. Our vision is to create membranes which do not suffer from ageing or fouling, and for which separation functionality is therefore maintained over time. We will achieve this through a combination of the synthesis of new membrane materials and fabrication of novel membrane composites (polymeric, ceramic and hybrids), supported by new characterisation techniques. Our ambition is to change the way the global membrane community perceives performance. Through the demonstration of membranes with immortal performance, we seek to shift attention away from a race to achieve ever higher initial permeability, to creation of membranes with long-term stable performance which are successful in industrial application.

The report 'Higher Degree of Concern' by the Royal Society of Chemistry highlighted the importance of effective PhD training in providing the essential skills base for UK chemistry. This is particularly true for the many industries that are reliant on catalytic skills, where entry-point recruitment is already at PhD level. However, the new-starters are usually specialists in narrow aspects of catalysis, while industry is increasingly seeking qualified postgraduates equipped with more comprehensive knowledge and understanding across the cutting edge of the whole field. The 2011 EPSRC landscape documents acknowledged the existing strengths of UK catalysis (including the concentration of academic expertise in the south-west), but recognised the critical need for growth in this strategic and high-impact field of technology. Over the following 18 months, the universities of Bath, Bristol and Cardiff worked closely together to put in place the foundations of an alliance in catalysis, based on the distinctive but complementary areas of expertise within the three institutions. This bid will build on this alliance by creating a single training centre with unified learning through teaching and research. Building on the best practice of existing and established postgraduate training, and benefitting from the close geographical proximity of the three universities, each intake of PhD students will form part of a single cohort. The first year of the PhD will involve taught material (building on and expanding Cardiff's established MSc in catalysis), a student-led catalyst design project, and research placements in research laboratories across all aspects of catalysis science and engineering (and across all three institutions). This broad foundation will ensure students have a thorough grounding in catalysis in the widest sense, fulfilling the industry need for recruits who can be nimble and move across traditional discipline boundaries to meet business needs. It will also mean the students are well-informed and fully engaged in the design of a longer PhD project for the next three years. This project will be the same as the more traditional PhD in terms of its scholarship and rigour, but still include wider training aspects. A further benefit of the broader initial training is that students will be able to complete PhD projects which transcend the traditional homogeneous, heterogeneous, engineering boundaries, and include emerging areas such as photo-, electro- and bio-catalysis. This will lead to transformative research and will be encouraged by project co-supervision that cuts across the institutions and disciplines. We have identified a core of 28 supervisors across the three universities, all with established track records of excellence which, when combined, encompasses every facet of catalysis research. Furthermore, full engagement with industry has been agreed at every stage; in management, training, project design, placements and sponsorship. This will ensure technology transfer to industry when appropriate, as well as early-stage networking for students with their potential employers.