The UK food chain, comprising agricultural production, manufacturing, distribution, retail and consumption, involves more than 300,000 enterprises and employs 3.6 million people. The food and drink industry is the largest manufacturing sector, employing 500,000 people and contributing £80 billion to the economy. It is also estimated that the food chain is responsible for 160 MtCO2e emissions and 15 Mt of food waste, causing significant environmental impacts. Energy is an important input in all stages of the food chain and is responsible for 18% of the UK's final energy demand. In recent years, progress has been made in the reduction of energy consumption and emissions from the food chain primarily through the application of well proven technologies that could lead to quick return on investment. To make further progress, however, significant innovations will have to be made in approaches and technologies at all stages of the food chain, taking a holistic view of the chain and the interactions both within the chain and the external environment. The EPSRC Centre for Sustainable Energy Use in Food Chains will make significant contributions in this field. It will bring together multidisciplinary research groups of substantial complementary experience and internationally leading research track record from the Universities of Brunel, Manchester and Birmingham and a large number of key stakeholders to investigate and develop innovative approaches and technologies to effect substantial end use energy demand reductions. The Centre will engage both in cutting edge research into approaches and technologies that will have significant impacts in the future, leading towards the target of 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050, but also into research that will have demonstrable impacts within the initial five year lifetime of the Centre. Taking a whole systems approach, the research themes will involve: i) Simulation of energy and resource flows in the food chain, from farm-gate to plate to enable investigations of energy and resource flows between the stages of the chain and the external environment, and facilitate overall energy and resource use optimisation taking into consideration the impact of policy decisions, future food and energy prices and food consumption trends. ii) Investigation of approaches and technologies for the reduction of energy use at all stages of the chain through reduction of the energy intensity of individual processes and optimisation of resource use. It is expected that a number of new innovative and more efficient technologies and approaches for energy reduction will be developed in the lifetime of the Centre to address processing, distribution, retail and final consumption in the home and the service sector. iii) Identification of optimal ways of interaction between the food chain and the UK energy supply system to help manage varying demand and supply through distributed power generation and demand-response services to the grid. iv) Study of consumer behaviour and the impact of key influencing factors such as changing demographics, increased awareness of the needs and requirements of sustainable living, economic factors and consumption trends on the nature and structure of the food chain and energy use. Even though the focus will be on the food chain, many of the approaches and technologies developed will also be applicable to other sectors of the economy such as industry, commercial and industrial buildings and transportation of goods. The Centre will involve extensive collaboration with the user community, manufacturers of technology, Government Departments, Food Associations and other relevant research groups and networks. A key vehicle for dissemination and impact will be a Food Energy and Resource Network which will organise regular meetings and annual international conferences to disseminate the scientific outputs and engage the national and international research and user communities

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.

The proposal seeks funds to renew and refresh the Centre for Doctoral Training in Formulation Engineering based in Chemical Engineering at Birmingham. The Centre was first funded by EPSRC in 2001, and was renewed in 2008. In 2011, on its 10th anniversary, the Centre received one of the Diamond Jubilee Queen's Anniversary Prizes, for 'new technologies and leadership in formulation engineering in support of UK manufacturing'. The scheme is an Engineeering Doctoral Centre; students are embedded in their sponsoring company and carry out industry-focused research. Formulation Engineering is the study of the manufacture of products that are structured at the micro-scale, and whose properties depend on this structure. In this it differs from conventional chemical engineering. Examples include foods, home and personal care products, catalysts, ceramics and agrichemicals. In all of these material formulation and microstructure control the physical and chemical properties that are essential to its function. The structure determines how molecules are delivered or perceived - for example, in foods delivery is of flavour molecules to the mouth and nose, and of nutritional benefit to the GI tract, whilst in home and personal care delivery is to skin or to clothes to be cleaned, and in catalysis it is delivery of molecules to and from the active site. Different industry sectors are thus underpinned by the same engineering science. We have built partnerships with a series of companies each of whom is world-class in its own field, such as P&G, Kraft/Mondelez, Unilever, Johnson Matthey, Imerys, Pepsico and Rolls Royce, each of which has written letters of support that confirm the value of the programme and that they will continue to support the EngD. Research Engineers work within their sponsoring companies and return to the University for training courses that develop the concepts of formulation engineering as well as teaching personal and management skills; a three day conference is held every year at which staff from the different companies interact and hear presentations on all of the projects. Outputs from the Centre have been published in high-impact journals and conferences, IP agreements are in place with each sponsoring company to ensure both commercial confidentiality and that key aspects of the work are published. Currently there are 50 ongoing projects, and of the Centre's graduates, all are employed and more than 85% have found employment in formulation companies. EPSRC funds are requested to support 8 projects/year for 5 years, together with the salary of the Deputy Director who works to link the University, the sponsors and the researchers and is critical to ensure that the projects run efficiently and the cohorts interact well. Two projects/year will be funded by the University (which will also support a lecturer, total >£1 million over the life of the programme) and through other sources such as the 1851 Exhibition fund, which is currently funding 3 projects. EPSRC funding will leverage at least £3 million of direct industry contributions and £8 million of in-kind support, as noted in the supporting letters. EPSRC funding of £4,155,480 will enable a programme with total costs of more than £17 million to operate, an EPSRC contribution of 24% to the whole programme.

The aim of the Prototyping Open Innovation Models cluster is to design and develop a new crowd sourced food and package design and innovation platform comprised of a suite of ICT tools for state-of-the-art manufacturing processes and implementing "customers in the loop" co-creation product development processes. The platform and the tools will enable (i) Harvesting content from the crowd and lead users, (ii) Synthesising content into an actionable format, and (iii) Integrating design and production systems. The idea for the platform is inspired by behaviours that are emerging on social media sites that see participants congregate around a current issue (citizen journalism - Arab Spring), ICT problems (user fora), leisure activities (maker/hacker communities - Ikea Hacker, Hackerspaces, food hacking), knowledge (Wikipedia), citizen science (Nasa's Stardust@home), and create and share content around such aspects. We are in an age of participation, where consumers no longer need to be on the periphery of development. Companies are increasingly finding that ideas and innovations originate from outside their organisations. 'Crowd-sourcing' is gathering pace, as companies seek to tap into the global knowledge base through their 'open innovation' strategies. Brands need to develop new relationships with Prosumers in which they may become a substantial part of the design and development process. We propose to apply this model of behaviour to explore opportunities for open innovation whereby a disparate group of individuals congregate around food and packaging design and production (two of the largest industry sectors in the UK). Packaging is not only a container, but it is one of the means of communication of the product that will make it recognized and remembered. The platform and plug-in tools comprise a virtual food product development environment that aims to de-bottleneck and streamline the food innovation pipeline by a cloud-based software platform and through the use of open innovation models to engage the consumer in the product development loop. This will significantly shorten the time to market for such new products by aligning and integrating design, manufacturing processes and systems with people. The objectives of the cluster are: - To design, develop, test and evaluate open innovation models for food manufacturing with real case studies from our industrial collaborators focused on enabling conversation and collaboration between consumers and brands for developing new food products - To design and implement mechanisms to feedback the 'Crowd's' needs and real world use, interaction and experience and translate these into design specifications of desired attributes for the food product they wish to consume, by collaborating directly with product development and manufacturing specialists - To develop facilities to allow a range of formal and informal relationships (interaction models) to be managed in a manner that is sensitive to the issues of privacy, IP and responsibility - To develop the methodology, ICT tools and a knowledge base to convert desired attributes of food into food product and packaging specification that can be produced and delivered to the consumer - To develop responsive manufacturing models and an ICT toolset to enable fast response to new and emerging food products by flexibly aligning and coordinating manufacturing resource to such needs - To implement and integrate all tools and methodologies into a collaborative cloud-based ICT platform enabling the digital collaboration between consumers, product developers and manufacturers - To conduct a series of feasibility studies identified jointly with our industrial partners to test and demonstrate our approach, methodologies and ICT tools - To conduct a series of workshops, seminars and outreach activities to disseminate our findings and methodologies and develop and extend our industrial user network

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.