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Source: New Energy Focus
As the UK gets to grips with the need to move away from fossil fuels towards a "low carbon economy", it is often physical forms of low carbon energy that grab all the headlines.
 The Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), based at Wilton near Middlesbrough, comes at low carbon energy from a different angle, writes James Cartledge.
Instead of working to tame the brute force of the wind or the power of the waves or tidal currents, the regionally-funded organisation is working to investigate chemical and electro-chemical means to lower the carbon footprint of industry.
This includes investigating the chemistry of biofuels to find a new generation of cleaner transport fuels, and how algae might be used to generate a range of fuels and chemicals.
There is also work on how chemical and pharmaceutical companies may be able to make their products without using the high temperatures and pressures of existing processes.
The CPI is fostering ideas like printable electronics, where electric circuit boards could be made by a kind of ink-jet printer - perhaps helping to produce cheaper solar energy systems.
And the organisation's first love, fuel cells, are a major focus of its work towards low carbon, zero carbon and even negative carbon living.
Approaching the market
Founded by a group of ex-industry professionals in April 2004, the CPI aims to take new inventions from the research stage to the market and specialises in opening up energy potential through the chemistry of available resources.
The organisation's regional funding - some 90% provided by the development agency One NorthEast - also gives it the implied goal to bring jobs and skills to the North East of England.
However, the CPI does not limit itself to helping local companies, and is even working with firms as far afield as Japan to help drive expertise towards the market.
The region has a ready supply of skills for the companies that could spin out from the CPI's work, from the existing petrochemical industries around. CPI's own Wilton Campus, the former ICI chemical research facility, is right next door to the huge Wilton industrial park. The Wilton site also brings a ready source of hydrogen.
Starting out as an organisation with a focus on fuel cells and the possibilities of hydrogen energy, the CPI has in the last six months expanded its remit considerably to become a multi-platform organisation that supports a wide range of industry innovations.
The CPI is ultimately a facilitator, with companies or universities able to approach it for assistance in moving an idea towards becoming a fully-fledged product ready for market. Steve Broome, Fuel Cell Cluster Manager at the CPI says, "In the last six months our funding was renewed and it was recommended that we move away from just fuel cells to create a low carbon network."
The organisation seeks to bring together companies and universities to benefit from each others' expertise to find innovative ways to reduce energy consumption or generate cleaner energy.
Unlike other knowledge-sharing networks out there, the CPI has its own asset base - it has laboratories and testing facilities, the equipment needed to drive innovations and the expert staff that can provide practical help and in-depth knowledge.
In that respect, it is like a chemical energy equivalent of the New and Renewable Energy Centre (NaREC) at Blyth.
The CPI's new approach has led to the defining of separate platforms to take forward different aspects of its work - including an advanced processes platform and a low carbon energy platform.
Advanced Processes
One of the jewels in the crown for the CPI is its £12 million National Industrial Biotechnology Facility, launched in 2007, which offers open access to trial and develop lower energy chemical processes.
Sophie Walton, advanced processing business manager at the CPI, works to bring more companies in to make use of the facility.
 Ms Walton explains that in particular, companies and academics working within the CPI's Advanced Processes platform are looking at how low-temperature enzymes can speed up chemical reactions instead of high temperatures.
Pharmaceutical, cosmetics and biofuels companies are among those looking into lowering their energy consumption by chemical means, she says.
Ms Walton explains: "In the North East we are very good at making chemicals in very high energy, high pressure processes, so one of the things One NorthEast wanted to see was a centre of excellence to make these chemicals via enzymes and bring the temperatures down."
Relationships with industry have helped the CPI develop its monitoring and testing equipment, which allow companies to test processes to find more energy-efficient ways of producing chemicals.
Another interesting development is the emergence of "microreactors", in which chemical reactions take place in long thin glass tubes, rather than large vats, making for a more efficient and less energy-intensive mixing process.
Work with US firm Corning Incorporated will allow industrial clients to test out their processes on microreactors at the CPI before investing in their own systems.
"We're scaling everything down and making it a continuous process, rather than a batch process," Ms Walton explains, pointing out that apparently small microreactors can produce relatively large volumes of product without the capital expenditure of conventional systems.
Low Carbon Energy
The CPI Low Carbon Energy platform builds on the organisation's existing expertise in fuel cells, looking to expand their usage and see how they might fit with other renewable energy technologies to result in low carbon systems better than the sum of their parts.
The platform is also looking beyond fuel cell developments to the hydrogen economy and other low carbon energy technologies.
"It's about applying a systems engineering or a chemical engineering approach to low carbon energy," says Dr Jon Helliwell, project manager at the CPI's Fuel Cell Application Facility.
"We had an independent report commissioned from E4tech, which said that whilst fuel cells are a very useful tool, they need to be applied in much more of a systems approach."
Initial fuel cell work has included how to apply fuel cells to real-world applications, like in the South Gale Lighthouse, as well as developing fuel cells to run on a range of fuels including hydrogen and natural gas.
Looking at the transport applications of fuel cells, the organisation has been working with a converted fuel cell Nissan Almera, developing hydrogen refuelling systems including a mobile filling station.
Among the platform's new goals are to exploit the chemical energy more effectively in areas like biofuels and what the CPI calls "under-utilised streams of materials" - wastes or by-products.
Fuel cells could be used in energy-from-waste applications, for example, since hydrogen or methane produced from wastes could mean more efficient electricity generation than waste combustion plants.
That means more electricity to sell on the part of waste-to-energy operators, with more Renewables Obligation income to boot.
"A lot of fuel cell companies are looking at waste at the moment," Dr Helliwell says, "that includes waste hydrogen streams, but also gasification and energy-from-waste."
Much of the Low Carbon Energy Platform's work seems very grounded in how to use existing industrial structures to move to a low-carbon world, such as the project working with a Japanese company to develop a toluene molecule that could be used as an easy-to-use liquid storage agent for hydrogen.
Dr Helliwell explains, "If you are going to get to a hydrogen economy in the next 15 to 20 years, if we develop a hydrogen storage system that can use the existing petrochemical infrastructure we'll have a much more practical approach."
Closed loop living
The concept of "closed loop living" is also emerging in the CPI's work, including a collaboration with Arup to look at how technologies like algae and carbon capture might be applied within an entire lifestyle to bring it towards the zero-carbon point.
Funding is also nearly in place for work with a charity to look at potential for developing negative-carbon housing in the North East region using a combination of renewable and low-carbon technologies.
Dr Helliwell says details of the project are yet to be announced, although he reveals it could involve "houses run on tap water, converted to hydrogen", adding that by the end of 2010 "we could have a community of houses with a negative carbon footprint."
The CPI is working with a Japanese fuel cell manufacturer on the negative carbon footprint housing scheme, which has led to questions about whether the regionally-funded organisation should be supporting foreign firms ahead of domestic competition.
But the organisation defends itself by suggesting that British fuel cell manufacturers may not be able to supply the kind of fuel cells needed for the project - meaning the project would have to be delayed or even shelved.
And, the CPI's approach in reaching out to companies in North America and Europe as well as the Far East could see foreign firms locating to the UK.
Renew
Last year, the CPI launched a new extension of its work called Renew, which aims to foster technologies that are a little closer to market than those with which the rest of the CPI deals.
Following on from the successful Renew Tees Valley scheme, Renew aims to promote a greener North East region, placing it at the forefront of the UK's low carbon economy. Project director John Barton pictured at the launch of Renew last year
John Barton, the former Carbon Trust regional manager, now directs a team of eight at Renew.
Among companies Renew is currently working with is Progressive Energy, a Gloucestershire-based firm seeking to develop a gas-fired power station using pre-combustion carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.
"The pundits would agree that pre-combustion is better," Mr Barton says regarding CCS, "but the government's CCS scheme is focussed on post-combustion, which has a huge power consumption while being hugely expensive."
Progressive has identified land for a plant and is planning to develop a pipeline to take carbon dioxide into a saline aquifer in the North Sea, but the plant is "still a few years away".
Renew's work is seeking to address the waste problem along with energy issues, such as its work with Graphite Resource, a company building an autoclave waste treatment system in Newcastle that is to use anaerobic digestion to generate biogas from waste residues.
Waste tyres are the focus of its work with Pyreco, a tyre pyrolysis specialist looking to recover materials and oil from old tyres, generating around 12MW of power from the oil. The CPI has helped the Luton firm find a site for a plant in Teesside that is now at the planning stage.
In particular, Mr Barton explains that Renew is keen on the "ecopark" idea of clustering together companies that can work together. Like the Wilton International Park next door to the CPI headquarters, Renew is about to start studies on a Teesside ecopark.
Ultimately, Renew hopes to bring jobs and investment to the North East region, and can provide plenty of help for companies that want to locate there, from planning to technical assistance and helping them link up with potential suppliers or markets.
It is a model that could be followed by other regions of the UK, despite the North East's inherent advantages regarding its industrial heritage.
Mr Barton says he believes there is a groundswell of thought that if the government or Europe was not driving cleaner energy work, it would not happen. He says that idea is not borne out by the achievements of Renew and the CPI.
"What we are doing in the North East has often been done in spite of government policy rather than because of it," he says. |
