The UK has a commitment to reduce green house gas emissions by 80% by 2050. To achieve this the UK energy sector has to migrate towards supplying innovative, high quality, highly reliable, low or zero emission energy generation sources. Hydrogen and fuel cells have emerged as potential initiatives that could serve as alternative energy sources. They are currently being engineered for a range of applications including automotive, stationary power, aerospace and consumer electronics. Each application presents its own set of requirements for the fuel cell system including performance, operating range and cost. With the introduction of a new technology into markets, where existing products are highly reliable, requires that this aspect of the system performance must match customer expectations which are demanded for a new product. The area of focus of this research aims to improve the durability and reliability of this new energy source by better system integration and design optimisation, coupled with effective health management to maximise the life of the power source. The outcome is a real time dynamic and adaptive intelligent lifecycle infrastructure with leading edge research in system design for reliability, prognostics and diagnostics, and semantically modeling relationships been the product and the environment for fuel cells, achieved through a multidisciplinary approach, including the areas of mathematics, information science and engineering. The dividends both in design efficiencies and lifecycle management can be achieved placing hydrogen and fuel cell power sources at the forefront of future UK energy provision.

Fuel cell technologies suffer from key cost, efficiency and degradation issues that must be resolved before they can reach their full commercial potential. Unfortunately many of the limitations of current polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) technologies are introduced, or exacerbated, by the current design of their membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs). Homogeneously constructed MEAs (i.e. the industrially standard) suffer from heterogeneity in the distribution of current, pressure, reactant concentration, water distribution and temperature, leading to numerous unintended gradients across the fuel cell which act to heterogeneously utilise, and therefore degrade, catalysts, their supports and ion conducting membranes. In HETEROMEA, we will characterise and understand the impact of intrinsic heterogeneity on MEA performance and durability. This understanding will be used to inform the design and implementation of material heterogeneously within next-generation MEAs, to 'smooth out' inefficient gradients and produce a homogeneous distribution of current, water, reactant partial pressure in operational PEMFCs; i.e. we will produce MEAs where the constituents (including e.g. Pt, ionomer, porosity, membrane) are intelligently distributed inhomogeneously, mitigating performance and durability losses. This will be enabled via the utilisation of robotic ultrasonic spray printing, a tool that allows flexible but precise control over material loading and distribution. HETEROMEA will therefore deliver a significant improvement in catalyst utilisation, mass transport resistance, charge transfer resistance and flooding, while using a standard range of industry-relevant fuel cell materials (e.g. commercial catalysts).

The Hydrogen and Fuel Cells (HFC) SUPERGEN Hub seeks to address a number of key issues facing the hydrogen and fuel cells sector specifically: (i) to evaluate and demonstrate the role of hydrogen and fuel cell research in the UK energy landscape, and to link this to the wider landscape internationally, and (ii) to identify, study and exploit the impact of hydrogen and fuel cells in low carbon energy systems. Such systems will include the use of HFC technologies to manage intermittency with increased penetration of renewables, supporting the development of secure and affordable energy supplies for the future. Both low carbon transport (cars, buses, boat/ferries) and low carbon heating/power systems employing hydrogen and/or fuel cells have the potential to be important technologies in our future energy system, benefiting from their intrinsic high efficiency and ability to use a wide range of low to zero carbon fuel stocks. One major drive for the Hub is to contribute to technology development that will help the UK to meet its ambitious carbon emissions targets. We will also link the academic research base with industry, from companies with global reach through to SMEs and technology start-ups, to ensure effective and appropriate translation of research to support wealth and job creation for UK plc, and with local and national government to inform policy development. The Hub will champion the complete landscape in hydrogen and fuel cells research, both within the UK and internationally, via networks, knowledge exchange and stakeholder (including outreach) engagement, community building, and education, training and continuous professional development.

The IDEA Fellowship is a 5-year programme to pave the way for the UK's industrial decarbonisation and digitalisation, via emerging AI, digital transformations applied to fundamental electrochemical engineering research. Electrochemical engineering is at the heart of many key energy technologies for the 21st century such as H2 production, CO2 reduction, energy storage, etc. Further developments in all these areas require a better understanding of the electrode-electrolyte interfaces in the electrochemical systems because almost all critical phenomena occur at such interface, which eventually determine the kinetics, thermodynamics and long-term performance of the systems. Designing the next generation of electrochemical interfaces to fulfil future requirements is a common challenge for all types of electrochemical applications. Designing an electrochemical interface traditionally relies on high throughput screening experiments or simulations. Given the complex nature of the design space, it comes with no surprise that this brute-force approach is highly iterative with low success rates, which has become a common challenge faced by the electrochemical research community. The vision of the fellowship is to make a paradigm-shift in how future electrochemical interfaces can be designed, optimised and self-evolved throughout their entire life cycle via novel Explainable AI (XAI) and digital solutions. It will create an inverse design framework, where we use a set of desired performance indicators as input for the XAI models to generate electrochemical interface designs that satisfy the requirements, in a physically-meaningful way interpretable by us. The methodology, once developed, will tackle exemplar challenges of central importance to the net zero roadmap, which include improving current systems such as H2 production/fuel cell and CO2 reduction, but also developing new electrochemical systems which do not yet exist today at industrial scale such as N2 reduction and multi-ion energy storage.

One of the most promising routes for decarbonising the transport sector is the use of electrochemical power and storage technologies (e.g. fuel cells, supercapacitors and batteries). However, challenges persist in terms of performance, durability, cost, integration together within vehicles (hybridisation) and interfacing with the electricity grid. This project will deliver a technology innovation chain that adopts a material-to-system approach. We will identify, optimise and scale-up new materials into devices, develop novel diagnostic techniques in the lab and for on-board monitoring and control, and validate the technologies in a hybrid vehicle. The objectives will be met by five interconnected work packages (WPs): Hierarchical Structured Electrodes (WP1) will combine the nano-micro scale structuring of lithium ion battery (LIB) materials with meso-scale electrode structuring to create novel hierarchical structured electrodes. The target will be to produce a range of new high power and high energy density combinations, achieved through a rational design approach based on arrangements of porosities and materials. Critical to this work will be close interaction with WP2 where meso-structure will be characterized by X-ray tomography. These 3D data will show to what extent manufacturing designs are realized (WP3), help to rationalize electrochemical performance, and guide subsequent iterations of design-make-test in a way not previously possible. Diagnostics and Correlative Metrology (WP2) will develop new methods of analysis to provide an unparalleled level of information about the internal working of batteries, fuel cells and supercapacitors and provide a mechanism for improving device design and materials formulation through a tightly integrated programme with WP1 on materials and WP3 on devices. System Level Integration and Evaluation (WP3), sits in a central position between materials and analysis in WP1 and 2 and grid and vehicle interfacing in WP4 and 5. This WP will integrate new materials into functioning devices and develop understanding of their performance and degradation characteristics. To examine on-board performance, real-time, system-level diagnostics and prognostics (to include, system models, state estimators and data management) will be developed to ensure safety, enable fault detection and extend system life. In WP4, Optimised Design of High-Rate Grid Interface, the interface of vehicle with the grid will be considered, with a particular focus on high-rate charging of electric vehicles (EV), whilst also minimising the grid impact of such high power chargers. This is envisaged via use of local off-vehicle energy storage at the charging station, to permit rapid recharge of EVs to the new high capacity on-vehicle energy stores (e.g. from WP1). This WP will study the optimal off-vehicle energy storage technology (e.g. supercapacitors, batteries, flow cells), characterise and diagnose the energy store performance at high rates and perform laboratory scale testing of a rapid charger. Finally, in WP5, In-Vehicle Aspects, Validation Platform and Impact, the newly-evolved electrochemical energy storage packages developed in earlier WPs will be validated in a hybrid vehicle. The data generated and derived equivalent circuits will be fed back into the design and innovation cycle, leading to better materials and devices. Findings will be delivered to project partners, and ultimately back to UK industry. The cross-disciplinary nature of the work and collaborative approach is ingrained in the work-plan, where, as well as having individual responsibility for a specific aspect of the work, each partner will contribute to at least two work-packages. We have strong industry support and will form an Industrial Advisory Committee to provide industry perspective and help us navigate the most relevant and impactful course through the project.