Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

1. TO UNDERTAKE MARKET RESEARCH TO MAKE INFORMED ASSESSMENTS OF THE PRODUCT & SERVICES This involves engaging with end-users within the known market sector of oil & gas: BP and Chevron have agreed to supply samples (reservoir cores) to test the performance of the new device against well characterised samples; M-I SWACO have already expressed interest and Saudi Aramco will be approached via existing contacts. The stakeholders will primarily be approached for assistance in developing and refining the IP in the following ways: - What are the needs of the end-users in terms of features and functionality and final analysis reporting of clay hydration and drilling fluid analysis? This will help us realise the full scope of a product/service that can be considered competitive in the market we intend to address. - What are their current methods for initial hydration tests of wellbore material and drilling fluid effectiveness? This information will allow us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of our existing IP. - Can they confirm that there is a market need for our IP? 2. TO RESEARCH COMPETITORS FOR BOTH TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING STRATEGY This research will involve: - A technological analysis on the available competitor products to determine key areas of scientific development which can be incorporated into our product designs. This will also expose the risks involved with building a more advanced product. - An investigation into the analysis techniques used to extract useful information from the data of the instruments. This will enable us to develop a standardised reporting format which will great increase efficiency and effectiveness of our IP. - Market strategy analysis which will shed light on competitor strength of brand, distribution strength, market reputation, breadth of product and technical support. This will allow us to develop the IP to a point where it can offer benefits over competing solutions. The starting point for the research is a competitor GRACE's instruments with which R. Patel (the researcher) and contacts in M-I SWACO have direct experience. Access to other competitor products will be made via BP and Chevron. 3. TO INVESTIGATE OTHER POTENTIAL MARKETS Although the driving market use for our IP is oil & gas exploration, the measurements that can be made using our IP are applicable to a broader market. There has been interest from existing contacts in hydrogen storage company, Cella Energy looking to measure expansion of their materials in water at high pressure and temperature, as well as UCL Physics. Any discipline where expansion of a material is measured over time in contact with water and other fluid chemicals can be approached. We will explore existing contacts within the food and pharmaceutical materials industry, as we believe these are another market for out IP. It is therefore imperative that these relationships are built and maintained to optimise the position of our IP within the overall market. 4. TO PERFORM ASSESSMENT OF MARKET OPPORTUNITY AND COMPETITORS TO BUILD COMMERCIALISATION STRATEGY & ROUTE TO MARKET This work will be performed by external consultancy, Woodview Technology Limited, who have considerable expertise in technology development for the energy industry (see Letter of Support). Alongside our existing contacts with end-users, they will engage with their own, larger network of supply chain companies who might be potential customers of our IP. This will broaden our network and develop a better informed strategy for commercialisation. Woodview Technology Ltd will address the following points: - Perform a market and IP analysis to aid in the development of a licencing agreement for partners to buy into the technology. - Investigate opportunities for patenting the IP. - Investigate viability of providing IP as a product or service. - Develop a route to market strategy, involving liable future activities, risks, etc

Polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are complex organic molecules which have the unique trait of including in their molecular structure more than one carbon rings. Everyday examples include naphthalene and some household solvents, however they are more common as chemical feedstocks and materials. Chemically, these compounds are unique both in terms of the physical properties and in terms of the way they interact with other compounds. PAHs have a strong propensity to self-associate, which must be either carefully controlled to obtain optimum material properties or appropriately inhibited to avoid unwarranted behaviour. The crux of the matter is that the association of PAHs in mixtures of organic solvents is central to a diverse range of contemporary engineering challenges including the fabrication of organic photovoltaics, design of high-performance discotic liquid crystals, and prevention of petroleum asphaltene aggregation and fouling. The problem faced by us is that the association of PAH's is misunderstood. It is a complex problem that involves not only the chemical nature of the molecules but the collective behaviour of molecules forming solid structures from solution. We are uniquely placed to study this problem, as we will obtain detailed information from X-ray and neutron experiments, where high energy beams scatter off pairs and clusters of these molecules giving us direct information on the type, shape and size of the clusters formed. In parallel, we will study these systems through molecular simulations, where we solve by numerical methods the time evolution of a model of the fluid at the level of the atoms forming the molecules. These simulations intimately depend on the description of the intermolecular forces, which we will validate against the scattering experiments. The disordered (as opposed to crystalline) multiscale structure of petroleum asphaltenes (aromatic aggregates of 4-8 molecules and diffuse clusters of radii ~5-20 nm) will serve as a benchmark case. Their association is driven by a collection of interactions, including, but possibly not limited to, a) phase separation due to the large difference in average molecular size between molecules and the surrounding solvents, b) enhanced interactions between the cores of the PAH cores that form a significant part of the molecules and c) polar interactions arising from the presence of heteroatoms (S, N, O, etc.). Of these three contributions, the latter is much less studied and is the focus of this study. In a final stage of our integrated approach we will consider coarse-grained simulations, where molecules are modelled by larger units (of several atoms each). This strategy, which we will fine tune to our rigorous experiments and fine-grained simulations, will allow us to perform extremely large simulations and explore time scales that are relevant to the association of PAH's. Our ultimate objective is to develop a set of guidelines that could inform the computer design of inhibitors to self-assembly. This will open an incredibly powerful research area where one could envision engineering molecules on a computer to satisfy industrial requirements.

Hydrogen production, by splitting water, enables the conversion of renewable energy into a carbon free, energy-dense sustainable fuel. It is set to increase by at least a factor of 10 by 2050, and has the potential to play a crucial role in decarbonising transport, industry and heating. However, only 4% of hydrogen produced today is from renewable sources; it is mainly produced by steam reforming fossil fuels, producing copious amounts of CO2. Proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers constitute the ideal means of splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen. They are highly amenable to coupling to renewable electricity sources, such as wind or solar, which are intermittent. Alternatively, PEM photoelectrolysers could allow the direct splitting of water by combining the functionality of a solar cell and an electrolyser in a single monolithic device. However, current PEM electrolyser and photoelectrolyser technologies are unsustainable: they require copious amounts of iridium-based oxides to catalyse oxygen evolution at the anode. Iridium is one of the scarcest elements; hence, if we are to scale up PEM electrolyser technology to a level where it will make a global impact, i.e. the terawatt level, we need to increase the catalytic activity (essentially the power stored per gram of iridium) by a factor of ~25. Moreover, iridium oxides slowly corrode during use, limiting the lifetime of PEM electrolysers. An alternative solution, could be to substitute iridium for more abundant elements; some non-precious metal oxides, such as those based on manganese exhibit some short lived activity spanning the course of a few hours, but still fall far short of the performance of iridium. Regardless of whether we use iridium based catalysts or non precious metal alternatives, they need to be more active and stable under the acidic conditions employed in PEM electrolysers to enable large scale hydrogen production. In H2terascale, we will address this challenge by establishing the fundamental factors controlling iridium and manganese oxide catalysts under oxygen evolution reaction conditions. We have brought together a transdisciplinary team, led by scientists at Imperial College and Swansea, with the support of (i) three UK companies, BP, Johnson Matthey and ITM Power (ii) an European company, HPNow (ii) the UK's National Physical Laboratory and (iii) an overseas institutions, Helmholtz Institute Erlangen Nürnberg. We will couple advanced operando spectroscopy techniques to benchmark performance tests of a large number of different catalyst materials produced using state of the art thin film deposition technology. We will elucidate the intricate relationship between catalyst structure, composition and functionality. We will establish the design rules for more active more stable catalysts, paving the way for terawatt scale hydrogen production.

Membranes offer exciting opportunities for more efficient, lower energy, more sustainable separations and even entirely new process options - and so are a valuable tool in an energy constrained world. However, high performance polymeric, inorganic and ceramic membranes all suffer from problems with decay in performance over time, through either membrane ageing (membrane material relaxation) and/or fouling (foreign material build-up in and/or on the membrane), and this seriously limits their impact. Our vision is to create membranes which do not suffer from ageing or fouling, and for which separation functionality is therefore maintained over time. We will achieve this through a combination of the synthesis of new membrane materials and fabrication of novel membrane composites (polymeric, ceramic and hybrids), supported by new characterisation techniques. Our ambition is to change the way the global membrane community perceives performance. Through the demonstration of membranes with immortal performance, we seek to shift attention away from a race to achieve ever higher initial permeability, to creation of membranes with long-term stable performance which are successful in industrial application.