The CDT proposal 'Fuel Cells and their Fuels - Clean Power for the 21st Century' is a focused and structured programme to train >52 students within 9 years in basic principles of the subject and guide them in conducting their PhD theses. This initiative answers the need for developing the human resources well before the demand for trained and experienced engineering and scientific staff begins to strongly increase towards the end of this decade. Market introduction of fuel cell products is expected from 2015 and the requirement for effort in developing robust and cost effective products will grow in parallel with market entry. The consortium consists of the Universities of Birmingham (lead), Nottingham, Loughborough, Imperial College and University College of London. Ulster University is added as a partner in developing teaching modules. The six Centre directors and the 60+ supervisor group have an excellent background of scientific and teaching expertise and are well established in national and international projects and Fuel Cell, Hydrogen and other fuel processing research and development. The Centre programme consists of seven compulsory taught modules worth 70 credit points, covering the four basic introduction modules to Fuel Cell and Hydrogen technologies and one on Safety issues, plus two business-oriented modules which were designed according to suggestions from industry partners. Further - optional - modules worth 50 credits cover the more specialised aspects of Fuel Cell and fuel processing technologies, but also include socio-economic topics and further modules on business skills that are invaluable in preparing students for their careers in industry. The programme covers the following topics out of which the individual students will select their area of specialisation: - electrochemistry, modelling, catalysis; - materials and components for low temperature fuel cells (PEFC, 80 and 120 -130 degC), and for high temperature fuel cells (SOFC) operating at 500 to 800 degC; - design, components, optimisation and control for low and high temperature fuel cell systems; including direct use of hydrocarbons in fuel cells, fuel processing and handling of fuel impurities; integration of hydrogen systems including hybrid fuel-cell-battery and gas turbine systems; optimisation, control design and modelling; integration of renewable energies into energy systems using hydrogen as a stabilising vector; - hydrogen production from fossil fuels and carbon-neutral feedstock, biological processes, and by photochemistry; hydrogen storage, and purification; development of low and high temperature electrolysers; - analysis of degradation phenomena at various scales (nano-scale in functional layers up to systems level), including the development of accelerated testing procedures; - socio-economic and cross-cutting issues: public health, public acceptance, economics, market introduction; system studies on the benefits of FCH technologies to national and international energy supply. The training programme can build on the vast investments made by the participating universities in the past and facilitated by EPSRC, EU, industry and private funds. The laboratory infrastructure is up to date and fully enables the work of the student cohort. Industry funding is used to complement the EPSRC funding and add studentships on top of the envisaged 52 placements. The Centre will emphasise the importance of networking and exchange of information across the scientific and engineering field and thus interacts strongly with the EPSRC-SUPERGEN Hub in Fuel Cells and Hydrogen, thus integrating the other UK universities active in this research area, and also encourage exchanges with other European and international training initiatives. The modules will be accessible to professionals from the interacting industry in order to foster exchange of students with their peers in industry.

The motivation for this proposal is that the global reliance on fossil fuels is set to increase with the rapid growth of Asian economies and major discoveries of shale gas in developed nations. The strategic vision of the IDC is to develop a world-leading Centre for Industrial Doctoral Training focussed on delivering research leaders and next-generation innovators with broad economic, societal and contextual awareness, having strong technical skills and capable of operating in multi-disciplinary teams covering a range of knowledge transfer, deployment and policy roles. They will be able to analyse the overall economic context of projects and be aware of their social and ethical implications. These skills will enable them to contribute to stimulating UK-based industry to develop next-generation technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and ultimately improve the UK's position globally through increased jobs and exports. The Centre will involve over 50 recognised academics in carbon capture & storage (CCS) and cleaner fossil energy to provide comprehensive supervisory capacity across the theme for 70 doctoral students. It will provide an innovative training programme co-created in collaboration with our industrial partners to meet their advanced skills needs. The industrial letters of support demonstrate a strong need for the proposed Centre in terms of research to be conducted and PhDs that will be produced, with 10 new companies willing to join the proposed Centre including EDF Energy, Siemens, BOC Linde and Caterpillar, together with software companies, such as ANSYS, involved with power plant and CCS simulation. We maintain strong support from our current partners that include Doosan Babcock, Alstom Power, Air Products, the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI), Tata Steel, SSE, RWE npower, Johnson Matthey, E.ON, CPL Industries, Clean Coal Ltd and Innospec, together with the Biomass & Fossil Fuels Research Alliance (BF2RA), a grouping of companies across the power sector. Further, we have engaged SMEs, including CMCL Innovation, 2Co Energy, PSE and C-Capture, that have recently received Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC)/Technology Strategy Board (TSB)/ETI/EC support for CCS projects. The active involvement companies have in the research projects, make an IDC the most effective form of CDT to directly contribute to the UK maintaining a strong R&D base across the fossil energy power and allied sectors and to meet the aims of the DECC CCS Roadmap in enabling industry to define projects fitting their R&D priorities. The major technical challenges over the next 10-20 years identified by our industrial partners are: (i) implementing new, more flexible and efficient fossil fuel power plant to meet peak demand as recognised by electricity market reform incentives in the Energy Bill, with efficiency improvements involving materials challenges and maximising biomass use in coal-fired plant; (ii) deploying CCS at commercial scale for near-zero emission power plant and developing cost reduction technologies which involves improving first-generation solvent-based capture processes, developing next-generation capture processes, and understanding the impact of impurities on CO2 transport and storage; (iimaximising the potential of unconventional gas, including shale gas, 'tight' gas and syngas produced from underground coal gasification; and (iii) developing technologies for vastly reduced CO2 emissions in other industrial sectors: iron and steel making, cement, refineries, domestic fuels and small-scale diesel power generatort and These challenges match closely those defined in EPSRC's Priority Area of 'CCS and cleaner fossil energy'. Further, they cover biomass firing in conventional plant defined in the Bioenergy Priority Area, where specific issues concern erosion, corrosion, slagging, fouling and overall supply chain economics.

The UK electricity system faces challenges of unprecedented proportions. It is expected that 35 to 40% of the UK electricity demand will be met by renewable generation by 2020, an order of magnitude increase from the present levels. In the context of the targets proposed by the UK Climate Change Committee it is expected that the electricity sector would be almost entirely decarbonised by 2030 with significantly increased levels of electricity production and demand driven by the incorporation of heat and transport sectors into the electricity system. The key concerns are associated with system integration costs driven by radical changes on both the supply and the demand side of the UK low-carbon system. Our analysis to date suggests that a low-carbon electricity future would lead to a massive reduction in the utilisation of conventional electricity generation, transmission and distribution assets. The large-scale deployment of energy storage could mitigate this reduction in utilisation, producing significant savings. In this context, the proposed research aims at (i) developing novel approaches for evaluating the economic and environmental benefits of a range of energy storage technologies that could enhance efficiency of system operation and increase asset utilization; and (ii) innovation around 4 storage technologies; Na-ion, redox flow batteries (RFB), supercapacitors, and thermal energy storage (TES). These have been selected because of their relevance to grid-scale storage applications, their potential for transformative research, our strong and world-leading research track record on these topics and UK opportunities for exploitation of the innovations arising. At the heart of our proposal is a whole systems approach, recognising the need for electrical network experts to work with experts in control, converters and storage, to develop optimum solutions and options for a range of future energy scenarios. This is essential if we are to properly take into account constraints imposed by the network on the storage technologies, and in return limitations imposed by the storage technologies on the network. Our work places emphasis on future energy scenarios relevant to the UK, but the tools, methods and technologies we develop will have wide application. Our work will provide strategic insights and direction to a wide range of stakeholders regarding the development and integration of energy storage technologies in future low carbon electricity grids, and is inspired by both (i) limitations in current grid regulation, market operation, grid investment and control practices that prevent the role of energy storage being understood and its economic and environmental value quantified, and (ii) existing barriers to the development and deployment of cost effective energy storage solutions for grid application. Key outputs from this programme will be; a roadmap for the development of grid scale storage suited to application in the UK; an analysis of policy options that would appropriately support the deployment of storage in the UK; a blueprint for the control of storage in UK distribution networks; patents and high impact papers relating to breakthrough innovations in energy storage technologies; new tools and techniques to analyse the integration of storage into low carbon electrical networks; and a cohort of researchers and PhD students with the correct skills and experience needed to support the future research, development and deployment in this area.

This project will assess a class of systems that blend electricity generation and storage, to understand the role that they could play in future energy systems. Their ability to deliver low-carbon energy on demand, at low system cost, will be investigated from technical, economic, and policy standpoints. With a growing fraction of electricity consumption being supplied by variable renewable energy sources, the ability to match energy generation and energy consumption is rapidly taking centre stage. Flexible ('dispatchable') coal and gas plants are being displaced to lower carbon emissions. At present, both nuclear and renewable energy technologies are generally configured to generate as much electricity as possible, regardless of the electricity demand at the time. Standalone energy storage, in which surplus electricity is converted to an intermediate energy form and then back again, is emerging as a vital partner to these generation technologies but it is prohibitively expensive for the duties that will be required in the near future. Active management of electricity demand (by shutting down or deferring loads) and electrical interconnections with neighbouring countries will also play important roles but these also have costs and they will not obviate the need for storage. This project will build a deep understanding of a class of system which takes a different and potentially much lower cost approach. These Generation Integrated Energy Storage (GIES) systems, store energy in a convenient form before converting it to electricity on demand. The hypothesis is that the lowest cost and highest performance storage can be achieved by integrating generation and storage within one system. This avoids the expense and inefficiency of transforming primary energy (e.g. wind, solar, nuclear) into electricity, then into an intermediate form, and later back to electricity. For example, the heat produced by a concentrating solar power plant can be stored at far lower cost and with lower losses than producing electricity directly and operating a standalone electricity store. A broad range of opportunities exist for low-carbon GIES systems, in both renewable and nuclear applications. The research team's expertise in wind, nuclear, and liquefied air storage will be applied directly to GIES systems in all three. The project will also establish a framework for the wider significance of GIES to energy systems. Technical and thermodynamic metrics that characterise high performing GIES systems will be developed, and used to compare with standalone generation and storage equivalents. The theoretical groundwork laid by this research will have applications far beyond the current project. Opportunities for current and future technologies will be mapped out and publicised, supporting and accelerating further work in the field. The deployment and operation of such technologies will be modelled by means of a pragmatic real options economic analysis. The unique policy and economic considerations of fusing generation and storage will be reviewed in detail, considering challenges and proposing solutions to regulatory and financial hurdles. Taken in concert, these will determine the value and scope for substantial deployment of GIES systems. In bringing to light the potential of the class of GIES systems, the research team will rectify a gap in energy systems thinking, in time to inform what will be a multi-billion pound expenditure in the coming decade. By providing the tools to analyse and deploy these systems, the research will open up a new avenue for cost-effective flexibility across the energy infrastructure of the UK and other regions worldwide.

The goal of the proposed EngD Centre is to produce research leaders to tackle the major national and international challenges over the next 15 years in implementing new power plant to generate electricity more efficiently using fossil energy with near zero emissions, involving the successful demonstration of CO2 capture, and also in reducing CO2 emissions generally from coal utilisation, including iron making. These leaders will be part of the new breed of engineers that will be thoroughly versed in cutting edge energy research and capable of operating in multi-disciplinary teams, covering a range of knowledge transfer, deployment and policy roles and with the skills to analyse the overall economic context of their projects and to be aware of the social and ethical implications. This proposal has involved wide consultation with the power generation sector which has indicated that the number of doctoral researchers required in the UK for the major developments in large-scale fossil energy power generation involving efficiency improvements and CO2 capture can be estimated conservatively as 150-200 over the next ten years. The Centre will play a vital role in meeting this demand by providing training in highly relevant technological areas to the companies concerned, as well as the broader portfolio of skills required for future research leaders. Further, Doosan Babcock, Alstom, E.ON, Rolls Royce, EDF, RWE, Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE), Welsh Power and Drax Power all support this bid and are willing to participate in the proposed Centre from 2009 onwards. Further, in terms of reducing CO2 emissions generally from coal utilisation, including iron making and smokeless fuel, this has drawn in other industrial partners, Corus and CPL. The innovative training programme involves a number of unique elements based around the social sciences and activities with China and is designed to ensure that the research engineers are not only thoroughly versed in cutting edge energy research but capable of operating in multi-disciplinary teams covering a range of knowledge transfer, deployment and policy roles and the ability to analyse the overall economic context of projects and to be aware of the social and ethical implications. The academic team draws upon the internationally leading fossil energy programme at Nottingham but also on colleagues at Birmingham and Loughborough for their complementary research in high temperature materials, plant life monitoring and energy economics. Given that virtually all of the research projects will benefit from using pilot-scale equipment in industry linked to the advanced analytical capabilities in the MEC and our overseas partners, together with the Group activities undertaken by the yearly cohorts, the training programme is considered to offer considerable added value over DTA project and CASE awards, as testified by the extremely high level of industrial interest in the proposed Centre across the power generation section, together with other industries involved in reducing CO2 emissions from coal utilisation.