The internal combustion engine will remain dominant across high power marine, distributed power generation and off-road vehicles for several decades to come, requiring intensified fundamental research around greener fuels and clean, high efficiency operating modes. The UK has an internationally leading reputation for excellence in fundamental engine research for lighter duty cars, vans and trucks, with clear opportunities now apparent to transfer fundamental knowledge and skills to large engines. At present, the UK academic community is totally lacking large single cylinder engine facilities, with researchers restricted to automotive scale experiments and simulations extrapolated up to larger scale (with significant errors in fundamental predictions). This is a major omission in accelerating Net Zero fuels, disruptive large engine technologies and policies from within the UK. The vision is therefore to establish a world-leading, megawatt scale decarbonised engine experimental facility, with two unique research engines strategically co-located as a new collaborative centre of excellence and nationally accessible asset leveraging existing infrastructure and expertise.

Battery electrified power is predicted to become the dominant mode of propulsion in future light duty transport. For sustainable heavy duty applications challenges remain around practical range, payload and total cost. Currently there is no economically viable single solution. For commercial marine vessels the problem is compounded by long service lives, with bulk carriers, tankers and container ships the main contributors to greenhouse gases. Ammonia (NH3) has excellent potential to play a significant role as a sustainable future fuel in both retrofitted and advanced engines. However, significant uncertainties remain around safe and effective end use, with these unknowns spanning across fundamental understanding, effective application and acceptance. This multi-disciplinary programme seeks to overcome the key related technical, economic and social unknowns through flexible, multidisciplinary research set around disruptive NH3 engine concepts capable of high thermal efficiency and ultra low NOx. The goal is to accelerate understanding, technologies and ultimately policies which are appropriately scaled and "right first time".