This application is for collaborative research on an area of cooling of great industrial and social significance by three teams with expertise in heat transfer, system simulation and component design. The lead team will be based at Newcastle University with the support teams at Oxford and South Bank UniversitiesIf the performance of electronic chips follow current trends and double every 18 months (Moore's Law), then it will soon not be possible to effectively cool them using conventional passive cooling and an alternative technique/devices must be found. This proposal is concerned with developing such a device. In particular it is concerned with a theoretical analysis and experimental evaluation of a miniature vapour compression refrigeration cycle optimised for the cooling of future electronic systems. The proposed work will consist of three distinct but interrelated activities that will be conducted at three centres by personnel with recognised skills, expertise, resources and experience to undertake this work. The proposed work is innovative in that it will examine issues associated with miniature refrigeration systems that have not been studied hitherto. It is intended to explore design criteria related to system stability and develop design codes to assist designers and manufacturers of such systems. The heat transfer performance of phase change in porous materials and the technology transfer associated with the compressor development all contribute to making this a very innovative project. The groups already have experience of working together and arrangements will be put in place to facilitate the exchange of ideas and expertise on a larger scale. The integrated approach will provide significant advantages compared to three unlinked projects and produce a significant step forward in electronic cooling technology. The work will be supported by several industrial partners and collaborators namely Thermacore, Panasonic and Honeywell who will all contribute technical and in kind resources to the project. Letters of support have been obtained from Panasonic, Thermacore, Honeywell-Hymatic and Hexag.

This application is for collaborative research on an area of cooling of great industrial and social significance by three teams with expertise in heat transfer, system simulation and component design. The lead team will be based at Newcastle University with the support teams at Oxford and South Bank UniversitiesIf the performance of electronic chips follow current trends and double every 18 months (Moore's Law), then it will soon not be possible to effectively cool them using conventional passive cooling and an alternative technique/devices must be found. This proposal is concerned with developing such a device. In particular it is concerned with a theoretical analysis and experimental evaluation of a miniature vapour compression refrigeration cycle optimised for the cooling of future electronic systems. The proposed work will consist of three distinct but interrelated activities that will be conducted at three centres by personnel with recognised skills, expertise, resources and experience to undertake this work. The proposed work is innovative in that it will examine issues associated with miniature refrigeration systems that have not been studied hitherto. It is intended to explore design criteria related to system stability and develop design codes to assist designers and manufacturers of such systems. The heat transfer performance of phase change in porous materials and the technology transfer associated with the compressor development all contribute to making this a very innovative project. The groups already have experience of working together and arrangements will be put in place to facilitate the exchange of ideas and expertise on a larger scale. The integrated approach will provide significant advantages compared to three unlinked projects and produce a significant step forward in electronic cooling technology. The work will be supported by several industrial partners and collaborators namely Thermacore, Panasonic and Honeywell who will all contribute technical and in kind resources to the project. Letters of support have been obtained from Panasonic, Thermacore, Honeywell-Hymatic and Hexag.

The ambitious targets in the United Kingdom for increasing the share of renewable energy sources integrated to the network, and the need for providing affordable, resilient and clean energy, call for a paradigm shift in energy systems operations. Electric vehicles offer the means to address these challenges and achieve uninterrupted operation by deferring their demand in time and acting as dynamic storage devices. As a result, their number is expected to increase rapidly over the next years, leading to a "green car revolution". This constitutes an opportunity for modernizing energy systems operation, but will unavoidably give rise to coordination and scheduling issues at a population level so that cost savings are achieved and reliability is ensured. The latter is of significant importance to prevent from undesirable disruptions of service. This project will address this problem using tools at the intersection of control theory, optimization and machine learning, allowing for a decentralized computation of the electric vehicle charging strategies, while preventing vehicles from sharing information about their local utility functions and consumption patterns that is considered to be private. We will develop algorithms capable of dealing both with cooperative and non-cooperative vehicle behaviours in large fleets of vehicles, and immunize the resulting strategies against uncertainty due to unpredictability in the vehicles' driving behaviour and due to the presence of renewable energy sources. The presence of an algorithmic tool with these features will allow for scalable charging solutions amenable to problems of practical relevance, will provide insight on the mechanism driving the response of large populations of electric vehicles, and embed robustness in the resulting charging schedules. As such, the proposed project will offer the means for reliable system operation and facilitate the integration of higher shares of renewable energy sources.

With increasing concerns over current CO2 levels and their association with climate change, research needs to establish a way to prevent further CO2 from reaching the atmosphere. Power production is the highest contributor of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere following by industrial process and transportation. Therefore, establishing technologies that extract the CO2 from these emissions before it reaches the atmosphere is considered the most viable solution. Since various types of CO2 capturing technologies have been developed over the past decade or so, one might ask, why is it that we are still not seeing these technologies rolled out yet? Here are a couple of reasons: - Expensive: There are various capture types but each of them consumed up to 40% of the power that is generated within the plant itself. This reduces the available energy for end-users, e.g., the general public, which is problematic since we are a nation that is increasingly dependent on technology. Longer power plants operation could top up energy lost to maintain increasing demands but this would increase the cost of energy to cover the additional production costs. - Size: Different technologies have different size requirements. A number can be retrofitted to existing plants, so space needs to be available for this, and other can only be applied to large plants to takes time for development and construction and is an all-round expensive route to take. - What about the CO2?: Capturing the CO2 is one thing but what to do with it after is another issue. Researchers continue to focus on its storage in underground depleted gas/oil reservoirs yet there are significant cost implications which occur in the run up to its storage, i.e., transport and injection, etc. Conversion of CO2 into a valuable and reusable product which subsequently closes the cycle would be the best option. This proposal brings together leading chemists, physicists and engineers at Southampton to develop a novel state-of-the-art technology that not only converts CO2 into a synthetic fuel but does so using solar energy. Optimised catalytic active sites incorporated into photonic fibres promote photochemical conversion of CO2 directly into synthetic fuel. Alongside this, computational models and simulations will provide physical insight to evaluate and optimise photonic-fibre catalytic converter technology for synthetic fuel generation. This will subsequently support the development of a lab-scale reactor which will demonstrate the scalability of this state-of-the-art technology. Engagement across the academic, industrial and public sectors will promote further opportunities for expansion and encourage development of early career researchers involved with the programme. The outcomes of the programme will lead to the development of not only new knowledge, but more importantly opportunities for impact within the energy sector.

This application is for collaborative research on an area of cooling of great industrial and social significance by three teams with expertise in heat transfer, system simulation and component design. The lead team will be based at Newcastle University with the support teams at Oxford and South Bank UniversitiesIf the performance of electronic chips follow current trends and double every 18 months (Moore's Law), then it will soon not be possible to effectively cool them using conventional passive cooling and an alternative technique/devices must be found. This proposal is concerned with developing such a device. In particular it is concerned with a theoretical analysis and experimental evaluation of a miniature vapour compression refrigeration cycle optimised for the cooling of future electronic systems. The proposed work will consist of three distinct but interrelated activities that will be conducted at three centres by personnel with recognised skills, expertise, resources and experience to undertake this work. The proposed work is innovative in that it will examine issues associated with miniature refrigeration systems that have not been studied hitherto. It is intended to explore design criteria related to system stability and develop design codes to assist designers and manufacturers of such systems. The heat transfer performance of phase change in porous materials and the technology transfer associated with the compressor development all contribute to making this a very innovative project. The groups already have experience of working together and arrangements will be put in place to facilitate the exchange of ideas and expertise on a larger scale. The integrated approach will provide significant advantages compared to three unlinked projects and produce a significant step forward in electronic cooling technology. The work will be supported by several industrial partners and collaborators namely Thermacore, Panasonic and Honeywell who will all contribute technical and in kind resources to the project. Letters of support have been obtained from Panasonic, Thermacore, Honeywell-Hymatic and Hexag.