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.

Significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) has become the utmost endeavour to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. In the UK, domestic heating itself is responsible for 17% of the total GHG emissions, this is comparable to the contribution of all petrol and diesel cars (BEIS, January 2022). Therefore, the decarbonization of domestic heat is a big challenge. A sustainable route to reduce GHG is to replace natural gas (NG) with hydrogen (H2) since the combustion of H2 does not produce CO2. However, the challenge for H2 combustion is that its combustion characteristics substantially differ from NG (methane, CH4), e.g., its use affects combustion stability, heat release and NOx emission, and increases the combustion rate due to a higher H2 flame temperature. Various technological challenges are also associated with using pure H2 such as its production, safety, quick charge capability and low density, which limits its storage capabilities. At this transitional stage, a practical option is the use of higher H2 enriched fuel (i.e., more than 20% blend with NG), which would be a promising solution to lower the CO2 emission compared with other fossil fuels. However, the impacts of higher H2 enriched fuels on the widely used condensing heating boilers are not extensively studied and fully understood. The H2 enrichment leads to higher flame radicals such as OH*, CN*, CH* and C2*, higher combustion temperature and flame destabilisation, thus triggering higher NOx formation. The flame radicals are closely related to the combustion structure, temperature, heat release and pollution emissions. Moreover, domestic condensing boilers use premixed cylindrical/surface burners, and these burners produce an array of flames. It is extremely difficult to measure flame radical information in different depths of the array of flames using existing measurement systems. The development of an intelligent instrumentation system has, therefore, become indispensable to assess and monitor the flame radical emissions and NOx formation process at different depths of flames, thus facilitating an in-depth understanding of the combustion process of different H2/CH4 blends. This project will develop and implement a new instrumentation system based on multi-spectral light field imaging to assess and monitor the flame radicals and temperatures with different H2/CH4 blends in domestic boilers. Light field image formation and depth reconstruction models will be developed to generate flame radical images at different depths for different spectral bands. The developed system will provide distinctive capabilities for characterising and quantifying the radical information and temperature profiles of a flame in a single exposure, simultaneously. The proposed project will also develop an intelligent data-driven model based on machine learning to predict NOx emission, thus, facilitating the improvement of domestic boiler performance. The relationships between flame radical characteristics and NOx emission will be established by conducting a series of experiments initially on a lab-scale test rig and then on commercial domestic boilers under different H2/CH4 blends and boiler settings. The prototype system will also be tested on a gas turbine test rig to evaluate its wider applicability. Experiments will be conducted to investigate the characteristics of CO2, H2 and ammonia (NH3) blend combustion, thus providing an in-depth understanding of stability regions and NOx emission with different proportions of CO2/H2/NH3 in the blend. The outcomes of this research will provide in-depth knowledge of the combustion characteristics of H2 blends, understanding of the boiler efficiency and pollutant formation process of domestic boilers. Once the system is developed, it will be used for the design of domestic boilers, and the engineering insights produced during the project could be used to develop a portable diagnostic tool for routine monitoring of blended-fuel boilers.

The Chinese 11th Five-Year Plan considers Sustainable Energy Supply and Sustainable Built Environment as crucial for achieving sustainable development. Recognising the potential benefits, the UK government has actively encouraged international collaborations with China. Two Engineering Schools at Queen's University Belfast (QUB), with internationally recognised research excellence in the Built Environment and in Electric Power & Control, have taken used these opportunities to collaborate with a number of, geographically distributed, leading Chinese universities, research institutions and industries. This effort has been supported by the EPSRC, the Royal Society & the Royal Academy of Engineering, and includes a 1M EPSRC grant for a UK-China joint consortium on sustainable electric power supply and a 220K EPSRC project to run UK-China Network of Clean Energy Research to promote SUPERGEN (Sustainable Power Generation and Supply) in China. Some QUB technologies have also been tested in major construction projects, such as the Beijing National Olympic Stadium (Bird's Nest) and the Hangzhou Bay Sea-Crossing Bridge (longest such bridge in the world). The applicants aim to enhance their science innovation and technology transfer activities in both China and the UK helped by their 7 university partners (principally Tsinghua University, # 1 in China & Zhejiang University, #3 in China, the others being Chongqing, Shanghai Jiaotong, Southeast, Shanghai and Hunan), 3 Chinese research institutions (Central Research Institute of Building & Construction CRIBC, the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Electrical Engineering, and the Research Institute of Highways). The China State Railway Corp. (largest under Ministry of Railways), the China State Construction Corporation (largest under Ministry of Construction), Bao Steel Corporation (largest in China, #6 in world sales) and Shanghai Electric Group (largest in China) are the main 4 Chinese industrial partners. Complementary UK support includes Amphora NDT Ltd, Macrete and SUPERGEN.

The educational curriculum seems to not successfully match with the 21st century skills requirements.In order to develop a student-centered learning environment, cover successfully the needs of a growing diverse population of students in China, India and Cambodia with a variety of multi-cultural, multi-linguistics and multi-ability needs and respond to the gap in skills set in the labour market and society, shortage of qualified teachers and poor level of student learning this proposal aims at modernizing the academic curricula, transferring knowledge and best practices on innovative and ICT-based teaching methodology on 21st skills acquisition from HEIs in Programme Countries to the HEIs of Partner Countries that will be benefited directly from this project. The results include 21st century skills teaching state-of-the-art report, a 21st century skills Educational Programme that will be incorporated in the academic program, capacity-building sessions for Faculty staff and development of 21stTeachSkills e-toolbox and learning Platform. Impact will be generated in institution-level, regional level through dissemination activities and networking and European level with the supprt of the EU-HEIs.

The research on inclusive education emphasizes investing in training for existing teachers and school leaders as well as for new teachers and understanding that teachers need support. China is not disconnected from these issues. However, there are some barriers to develop inclusive education in society such as attitudes, teacher training and a lack of participation within the vulnerable groups of society. Currently, the Chinese government has made some effort; e.g. implementation of the national policy named Learning in Regular Classrooms and ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at the policy-making level. But this educational policy must be accompanied by other measures that have an impact on educational practices and school management, especially on the training of teachers.Against this background, this project helps to contribute the demand for highly educated teachers at the primary school level can be tackled, and universities in China can be encouraged to take European standards into consideration.This project is innovative because it focuses on the topic of inclusive education for supporting teacher training for Chinese primary school teachers. It is the first time a Mater’s is being created in China in the field of inclusive education with its own characteristics and it will be designed in such a way that it can easily be transferred to interested universities. The project will adopt these new approaches developing new types of courses for teachers with a strong emphasis on inclusion and peer learning, including good practices, scenarios and case studies. A website on inclusive education will be created. It is going to enhance not only what teachers are able to do practically but also to promote learning for leaving, learning to know, learning to do, learning to live, learning to be; in short, learning values, attitudes, creative and helpful teaching strategies in order to ensure education for all students.