Mercury pollution from stationary combustion of fossil and biomass fuels is a significant contributor to global Hg emissions, accounting for 24% of global Hg emissions as reported by the Global Mercury Assessment 2018, with no decrease in the sector's emissions since the last report in 2013. While most primary sources of Hg pollution through industrial uses are currently being phased out due to the international ban on Hg through the Minamata Convention on Mercury, the unintentional Hg emissions from energy generation have only started to be regulated for stationary coal power stations in recent years with the introduction of the US Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) in 2016 and in the EU by the implementing decision by the European Commission on the Best Available Technique decision for large combustion plants in 2017 and is still not regulated with emissions limits in many parts of the world. While common control strategies for other pollutants such as NOx and S may deliver a co-benefit with regards to reducing Hg emissions in stationary solid fuel plants, this effect is often not systematically studied and may vary on the specific operating conditions of the power plants. The demand for cheap and efficient sorbents to inhibit and/or lower Hg emissions will foreseeably rise as stricter Hg regulation moves from large-scale to smaller scale combustion units, and economies that are reliant on combustion for energy generation, such as Poland, China, India and Brazil, are seeking to combat their Hg emissions. Mercury is highly redox-active, with different species exhibiting very different redox behaviours and toxicity in the environment. Elemental Hg0, the single most important Hg species produced during combustion, is volatile and has a residence time of up to 1 year in the atmosphere, enabling it to redeposit on a global scale, contaminating ecosystems far removed from the point source of pollution. Gaseous Hg(II) species on the other hand exhibit a much higher propensity to interact with other particulates in the flue gas and traditional air pollution control units such as selective catalytic reduction units for NOx reduction commonly found in power plants. The fuel and additive chemistry significantly alter the reactions which determine the chemistry of flue gas Hg. While this is well established for coal-fired power stations, less is known about how components in biomass flue gas influence Hg speciation and subsequent emissions. To abate Hg from combustion, it is necessary to control its redox transformations within a gas stream. This PhD project will seek to apply insights from geochemical cycling of Hg, and adapt it to a power plant environment by engineering a biomaterial which is able to stabilise and trap Hg in its oxidised form within a flue gas stream. Biochar has frequently been discussed as a promising low-cost medium for Hg removal. However, especially in the available applied studies, a mechanistic understanding of the reaction by which the doped char captures and oxidises Hg is often lacking, hindering further optimisation of such materials. Hence, a detailed mechanistic understanding of the interactions of Hg with biochar engineered with Mn oxides will be developed as 1) an advanced sorbent for Hg capture and 2) catalyst for redox transformations of Hg so as to capture and store Hg in an amenable chemical form.

Energy efficiency is becoming increasingly important in today's world of battery-powered mobile devices and power-limited servers. While performance optimisation is a familiar topic for developers, few are even aware of the effects that source code changes will have on the energy profiles of their programs. Without knowledge of these effects, compiler and operating system writers cannot create automatic energy optimisers. To realise the needed energy savings, we require the capability to track energy consumption and associate it with code and data at a fine granularity. Furthermore, compilers and operating systems must exploit this capability to optimise applications automatically. This project will investigate novel techniques for software-centric modelling, measurement, accounting and optimisation of energy efficiency in computing systems. Energy consumption will be matched against programming language abstractions, providing developers with the information that they need. The project will use this fine-grained accounting to build novel compiler optimisations that target energy consumption. It will create low-energy runtime systems that adapt to environmental changes.

The objective of this PhD studentship is the development of new chemical methodologies to engineer the microstructure and surface chemistry of aerogel catalysts and the integration of these novel catalyst systems into modern chemical flow processes. The project will explore the synthesis of nanocarbon aerogels and their chemical functionalisation with nanoparticles and molecular entities. The project will then integrate the materials into chemical flow reactor to investigate structure-function relationships of the functionalised aerogels as porous, heterogeneous catalysts within electrochemical reactions, with focus on fine-chemical and CO2 reduction reactions. The benefits of the project include the development of innovative new catalysts systems that can be integrated with advanced chemical processing and manufacturing technologies with the aim to enhance efficiency in commercially- and environmentally-important reactions, such as CO2 utilisation and pharma-relevant fine-chemical synthesis. The studentship will also provide highly specialised training for the PhD student in advanced materials science and process engineering techniques. The student will also benefit from Leeds-intern facility access, e.g. through the Bragg Centre for Materials Research and the Institute for Process Research and Development. The PhD project has synergies with the current EPSRC research grant "Catch and Release: Recycling of Homogenous Metal Catalysts Using Aromatic Tags and Electroactive Nanocarbon Foams" (EP/T012153/1), led by the PhD supervisor. In this context, opportunities might arise at the later stages of the studentship for collaboration with UK chemical manufacturing partners to explore scale-up, knowledge transfer and commercial exploitation of the PhD research. The proposed research has a strong interdisciplinary theme and falls within various EPSRC research themes and areas, including advanced materials, catalysis, functional ceramics and inorganics, manufacturing the future, and graphene and carbon nanotechnology.

Creating composite materials that have low friction and wear in realistic engineering environments. This project will focus on the nanoscale effects towards low friction and wear, which will then scale up to macroscale environments. The first objective will be to look at a specific area where friction and wear are high and then look at what current options are available to reduce this and see why the latest research hasn't been effectively scaled up to be used. The application will primarily be focused on the automotive industry where reduction in friction and wear will have a noticeable effect on reduction in pollution and also increase fuel efficiency.

The food system feeds societies, employs billions of people, and underpins international aspirations such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. However, it is responsible for one-third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, threatens more species than any other activity, uses over half of all nitrogen and phosphorus, and over 70% of all freshwater. Balancing these benefits and pressures is essential for human wellbeing and the liveability of both specific places and the planet. These environmental pressures come disproportionately from the production of animal products (e.g. 57% of food system emissions come from livestock production, Xu et al 2021), largely due to their low environmental efficiency compared with plant-based foods (Poore & Nemecek 2018). Reducing consumption of animal products in wealthy countries and avoiding shifts to high-meat diets as economies develop is therefore essential to maintain a liveable environment. However, attempts to reduce consumption may be resisted due to the social and cultural importance of animal products and production systems, strong relationships between wealth and consumption, suggesting aspirational consumption (Tilman et al 2011), and political aversion to any perceived limiting of consumer choice. In this context, alternative proteins (APs) offer a potential solution. APs include plant-based, cultivated and fermentation-made meat, eggs, dairy, and seafood, which have significantly lower environmental impacts than animal-based counterparts. They may also offer health benefits at the individual level (e.g. higher fibre, lower calorie density) and societal level (e.g. reducing risks from zoonotic diseases and antimicrobial resistance). Importantly, they may enable consumers to substitute lower-impact products into diets while continuing to access familiar tastes and dishes. However, the growth of APs has not been universally welcomed, being described as a technological solution that fails to address the complex social, economic and cultural factors associated with food production and consumption. In addition, the social, cultural, economic, and ecological transformations that could result from a widescale shift to APs are understudied. Instead, most research has focused on technical product development or life cycle assessments of specific products. Given the speed and scale of AP development there is an urgent need to address this knowledge gap. This interdisciplinary project has been co-designed with the European team of the Good Food Institute-the world's leading AP-focused international third-sector organisation-to answer the overarching question: "How will alternative proteins affect people and the environment in the UK and Europe over coming decades?". To do so, the student will tackle three linked questions: (1) How are different APs likely to be accepted in different European contexts? (2) How could European demand for different proteins change up to 2050? (3) What would the social, economic, and environmental impacts of meeting this demand be? This interdisciplinary project will make empirical and theoretical contributions to a range of disciplines, including economics, land economy, and environmental social sciences. For example, providing insight into the substitutability of different protein sources across cultures; the liveability implications of different ways of meeting future food demand; and how shifts to APs could affect people's relationships with their environments.