Adopting the Committee on Climate Change's recommendation to net zero emissions by 2050 demonstrates a clear commitment to leadership in the face of climate emergency. If this is to be achieved, decarbonising the industrial sector represents a critical challenge. However, at present, decarbonisation solutions are not economically competitive. It is critical to the UK's international competitiveness that this is underpinned by implementation of world-leading innovation, and therefore, ensuring research and innovation communities work together for timely industrial implementation. This project focuses on engaging academia, industry, policymakers and other stakeholders to develop an interdisciplinary consortium and subsequent proposal for the Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC). I will facilitate collaboration between researchers to foster co-creation of new interdisciplinary research and innovation programmes. The transformative innovation proposed here will be developed to address head on complex social and environmental challenges and contribute to low-cost transitions to new socio-technical systems. The Centre's agenda will be shaped initially by consultations, as well as network analysis, mapping and market analysis. Collaborative events and virtual environments will develop the co-creation of the cross-cutting challenges. I will embed EDI principles in the design of the Centre's engagement strategy.

Increasing reliance on intermittent renewable electricity sources makes balancing supply to demand difficult. This will become increasingly challenging as the proportion of renewables increases into the future. One solution is the large-scale geological storage of energy in the form of hydrogen. Electricity generation from stored hydrogen can balance summer to winter seasonal energy demands, with the added potential for hydrogen to repurpose the gas grid and replace methane for heating. This is significant as the heating of buildings is currently the largest source of carbon emissions in the UK, exceeding those for electricity generation. However, the underground storage of hydrogen in porous rocks has not yet been demonstrated commercially. This project hence uses state-of-the-art laboratory experiments to address questions which require insight before commercial trials occur, focusing on the geological (underground) storage of hydrogen in geographically-widespread porous rocks. Storage of hydrogen underground is well established in caverns of halite (salt). However, in the UK this type of geology is restricted only to Teesside, Northern Ireland and Cheshire, with long and costly transport to consumers elsewhere. Methane gas in the UK is already stored underground onshore in porous reservoirs and offshore in re-purposed natural gas fields, and that provides insight to operational designs and challenges. The project partners have expertise in hydrocarbon reservoirs, geological assessment of CO2 storage, and compressed air energy storage using porous rocks. WP1 Hydrogen reactivity examines whether the hydrogen could react chemically with the rocks into which it is injected or the overlying seal rock, which could prevent the gas from being recovered and used. Controlled laboratory experiments with hydrogen injection into porous rock at subsurface temperatures and pressures will identify and quantify likely chemical reactions. WP2 Petrophysics assesses how effectively hydrogen migrates through water-filled porous media, and how much of the injected hydrogen can actually be recovered from the rock. Because the rock is made of solid grains with a network of pore spaces between, capillary forces naturally trap some of the hydrogen. How much is trapped affects the commercial viability of the whole process. Laboratory-based experimentation will inject hydrogen into rock samples to help answer this question. CT scanning provides live 3D images of the hydrogen retention in the rock pores. WP3 Flow simulation uses digital computer models of fluid flow adapted from hydrocarbon simulation to scale up from laboratory experiments to an underground storage site. Hydrogen reactive flow properties from WP1 and WP2 will be used to calibrate numerical fluid flow software codes. These models can calculate how efficiently the hydrogen can be injected, and predict how much of the hydrogen can be recovered during operation. Volumes and types of cushion gas to be left in the reservoir as a precaution to maintain operation pressure and minimise water encroachment during withdrawal periods will also be assessed. WP4 Public perception considers how societal familiarity with hydrogen may be much lower compared to natural gas. A key objective of the project is to ascertain at an early stage how citizens and key opinion shapers feel about hydrogen storage underground, and to engage civil society with the research and development process to ensure that hydrogen storage develops in a way that is both technically feasible and socially acceptable. WP5 Project management, industry advisory board, communication and outreach are essential in this type of project. Digital updates will be posted on a dedicated project website and social media channels, with presentations made at academic and industry events. Public project reports and, eventually, peer reviewed publications will provide an open access record of project progress.

Renewable hydrogen will play an important role in the UK's energy future for low carbon transport, heating, grid-scale energy storage and CO2 capture/utilisation. The UK's hydrogen demand would reach 143~860 TWh/year by 2050, while the current production capacity is only 27 TWh/year. Conversion of abundant sunlight to produce H2 is one of attractive approach to meet the demand. Among various solar H2 technology, photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting has gained much attention due to its operational flexibility, reduced electron-hole recombination and natural separation of H2 and O2 in two electrodes. Learning from the historic trajectory of solar PV commercialisation, the key to deliver market acceptable PEC hydrogen production will be (1) enabling the use of much cheaper materials (such as silicon) and (2) significantly increasing the STF efficiency to at least 20%. SOLO aims to remove the 1.23 eV thermodynamic restraints from the PEC water splitting system, by developing a pH-differential strategy to alter the individual equilibrium potentials of anodic (OER) and cathodic (HER) half reactions, thus reducing the energy barrier. A novel membraneless optofluidic platform is proposed to accommodate the pH-differential design, where acid and alkaline electrolyte will be able to co-exist in a single cell. Promising low bandgap materials will be demonstrated in the SOLO platform to achieve cost effectiveness and high STF efficiency.

Hydrogen and fuel cells (HFCs) offer multiple advantages, such as low urban pollution / CO2 emission, quiet operation, low self-discharge, high energy density and extended driving ranges. The technology simultaneously addresses many of the major energy and environmental challenges, and shows the flexibility to integrate the diverse/intermittent renewable energy sources that are increasingly installed across Europe and emphasized in EU "Horizon 2020" [1,2]. It is estimated that the HFC market will reach $3 billion with hydrogen demand from fuel cells > 140 million kg in 2030 [1]. However, the technology is not yet economically competitive with other fuel systems, e.g. gas turbines for balancing electrical grids, Li-ion batteries for domestic storage, nor high compression ratio diesel engines for transport. Two important factors contributing to the elevated costs of HFCs are: (1) the additional cost of high-purity H2 needed to extend asset lifetime, especially when the H2 is generated from diverse sources or supplied by an on-board hydride/hybrid tank; (2) the cost associated with the limited lifetime of HFCs due to impurity built-up or catalytic poisoning. Therefore, low-cost and in-line H2 purification and impurity monitoring are crucial for the reduction of H2 fuel costs and fuel cell running cost due to extended lifetime of the fuel cell stacks. This multi-disciplinary proposal will seek to address both problems by: (1) developing low-cost and high performance in-situ H2 purification systems to reduce H2 fuel cost for HFCs; (2) developing low-cost, robust CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) gas sensors for real-time impurity monitoring both to reduce cell maintenance costs and extend the lifetime of HFCs. These two issues represent two critical impediments to the future of hydrogen technology. Members of the consortium provide complementary expertise in hydrogen storage and purification [XG & AS], hydrogen fuel cells, including catalyst poisoning and other degradation phenomena [AS], development of gas/chemical microsensors [JG], as well as large project design and management [XG, JG]; thus enabling the consortium to develop an integrated approach to H2 purification and impurity monitoring offering novel design, fundamental analysis, and optimal integration of such devices for efficient, low-cost and high-purity hydrogen delivery. We propose to work closely with the HFC Hub, UKERC, and our industrial supporters, as well as other relevant agencies and scientists in the UK and internationally, to accelerate the technology transfer of HFCs to industry. Key word: hydrogen fuel cell, purification, gas sensors, impurity monitoring

Renewable hydrogen will play an important role in the UK's energy future for low carbon transport, heating, grid-scale energy storage and CO2 capture/utilisation. The UK's hydrogen demand would reach 143~860 TWh/year by 2050, while the current production capacity is only 27 TWh/year. Conversion of abundant sunlight to produce H2 is one of attractive approach to meet the demand. Among various solar H2 technology, photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting has gained much attention due to its operational flexibility, reduced electron-hole recombination and natural separation of H2 and O2 in two electrodes. Learning from the historic trajectory of solar PV commercialisation, the key to deliver market acceptable PEC hydrogen production will be (1) enabling the use of much cheaper materials (such as silicon) and (2) significantly increasing the STF efficiency to at least 20%. SOLO aims to remove the 1.23 eV thermodynamic restraints from the PEC water splitting system, by developing a pH-differential strategy to alter the individual equilibrium potentials of anodic (OER) and cathodic (HER) half reactions, thus reducing the energy barrier. A novel membraneless optofluidic platform is proposed to accommodate the pH-differential design, where acid and alkaline electrolyte will be able to co-exist in a single cell. Promising low bandgap materials will be demonstrated in the SOLO platform to achieve cost effectiveness and high STF efficiency.