Applications & Pathways

This study aims to present a philosophical and quantitative perspective of a propulsion system for a large-scale hydrogen-fuelled liquid-hydrogen (LH2) tanker ship. Established methods are used to evaluate the design and performance of an LH2-carrier propulsion system for JAMILA a ship designed with four cylindrical LH2 tanks bearing a total capacity of ~280000 m3 along with cargo and using the boil-off as propulsion and power fuel. Additionally the ship propulsion system is evaluated based on the ship resistance requirements and a hydrogen-fuelled combined-cycle gas turbine is modelled to achieve the dual objectives of high efficiency and zero-carbon footprint. The required inputs primarily involve the off-design and degraded performance of the gas-turbine topping cycle and the proposed power plant operates with a total output power of 50 M.W. The results reveal that the output power allows ship operation at a great speed even with a degraded engine and adverse ambient conditions.

Fuel cell based micro-combined heat and power (CHP) units used for domestic applications can provide significant cost and environmental benefits for end users and contribute to the UK’s 2050 emissions target by reducing primary energy consumption in dwellings. Lately there has been increased interest in the development of systematic methods for the design of such systems and their smoother integration with domestic building services. Several models in the literature whether they use a simulation or an optimisation approach ignore the dwelling side of the system and optimise the efficiency or delivered power of the unit. However the design of the building services is linked to the choice of heating plant and its characteristics. Adding the dwelling’s energy demand and temperature constraints in a model can produce more general results that can optimise the whole system not only the micro-CHP unit. The fuel cell has various heat streams that can be harvested to satisfy heat demand in a dwelling and the design can vary depending on the proportion of heat needed from each heat stream to serve the energy demand. A mixed integer non-linear programming model (MINLP) that can handle multiple heat sources and demands is presented in this paper. The methodology utilises a process systems engineering approach. The model can provide a design that integrates the temperature and water flow constraints of a dwelling’s heating system with the heat streams within the fuel cell processes while optimising total CO₂ emissions. The model is demonstrated through different case studies that attempt to capture the variability of the housing stock. The predicted CO₂ emissions reduction compared to a conventionally designed building vary from 27% to 30% and the optimum capacity of the fuel cell ranges between 1.9 kW and 3.6 kW. This research represents a significant step towards an integrated fuel cell micro-CHP and dwelling design.

The Energy Systems Catapult (ESC) explored the role of households in a net-zero emissions society to accompany the CCC’s Net Zero report looking at opportunities and challenges for households to reduce emissions from today’s levels and to support the stretch from an 80% emissions reduction to a net-zero greenhouse gas target. As well as describing a net-zero emissions world for households of different types the ESC looked at average household emissions under different decarbonisation scenarios and the options households can take to contribute to the decarbonisation effort.

This supported the Net Zero Technical report.

Energy–structure–function (ESF) maps can aid the targeted discovery of porous molecular crystals by predicting the stable crystalline arrangements along with their functions of interest. Here we compute ESF maps for a series of rigid molecules that comprise either a triptycene or a spiro-biphenyl core functionalized with six different hydrogen-bonding moieties. We show that the positioning of the hydrogen-bonding sites as well as their number has a profound influence on the shape of the resulting ESF maps revealing promising structure–function spaces for future experiments. We also demonstrate a simple and general approach to representing and inspecting the high-dimensional data of an ESF map enabling an efficient navigation of the ESF data to identify ‘landmark’ structures that are energetically favourable or functionally interesting. This is a step toward the automated analysis of ESF maps an important goal for closed-loop autonomous searches for molecular crystals with useful functions.

A potentially viable solution to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions by vehicles in the transportation sector is the deployment of hydrogen as alternative fuel. A limitation to the diffusion of the hydrogen‐fuelled vehicles option is the intricate refuelling stations that vehicles will require. This study examines the practical use of hydrogen fuel within the internal combustion engine (ICE)‐powered long‐haul heavy‐duty trucking vehicles. Specifically it appraises the techno‐ economic feasibility of constructing a network of long‐haul truck refuelling stations using hydrogen fuel across Canada. Hydrogen fuel is chosen as an option for this study due to its low carbon emissions rate compared to diesel. This study also explores various operational methods including variable technology integration levels and truck traffic flows truck and pipeline delivery of hydrogen to stations and the possibility of producing hydrogen onsite. The proposed models created for this work suggest important parameters for economic development such as capital costs for station construction the selling price of fuel and the total investment cost for the infrastructure of a nation‐ wide refuelling station. Results showed that the selling price of hydrogen gas pipeline delivery op‐ tion is more economically stable. Specifically it was found that at 100% technology integration the range in selling prices was between 8.3 and 25.1 CAD$/kg. Alternatively at 10% technology integration the range was from 12.7 to 34.1 CAD$/kg. Moreover liquid hydrogen which is delivered by trucks generally had the highest selling price due to its very prohibitive storage costs. However truck‐delivered hydrogen stations provided the lowest total investment cost; the highest is shown by pipe‐delivered hydrogen and onsite hydrogen production processes using high technology integration methods. It is worth mentioning that once hydrogen technology is more developed and deployed the refuelling infrastructure cost is likely to decrease considerably. It is expected that the techno‐economic model developed in this work will be useful to design and optimize new and more efficient hydrogen refuelling stations for any ICE vehicles or fuel cell vehicles.

The cost reduction of hydrogen refueling stations (HRSs) is very important for the popularization of hydrogen vehicles. This paper proposes an optimized operation algorithm based on hydrogen energy demand estimation for on-site hydrogen refueling stations. Firstly the user’s hydrogen demand was estimated based on the simulation of their hydrogenation behavior. Secondly mixed integer linear programming method was used to optimize the operation of the hydrogen refueling station to minimize the unit hydrogen energy cost by using the peak–valley difference of the electricity price. We then used three typical scenario cases to evaluate the optimized operation method. The results show that the optimized operation method proposed in this paper can effectively reduce the rated configuration of electrolyzer and storage tank for HRS and can significantly reduce the unit hydrogen energy cost considering the construction cost compared with the traditional method. Therefore the optimization operation method of a local hydrogen production and hydrogen refueling station proposed in this paper can reduce the cost of a hydrogen refueling station and accelerate the popularization of hydrogen energy vehicles. Finally the scope of application of the proposed optimization method and the influence of the variation of the electricity price curve and the unit cost of the electrolyzer are discussed.

Tailpipe emissions from vehicles consist of CO2 and other greenhouse gases which con‐ tribute immensely to the rise in global temperatures. Green hydrogen produced from the gasification of biomass can reduce the amount of CO2 emissions to zero. This study aims to provide a modelling framework to optimize the production of hydrogen from biomass waste obtained from different cities for use in the road transport sector in Nigeria. A gasification model with post‐treatment shift conversion and CO2 removal by adsorption is proposed. In this study six cities are simulated based on technical and environmental considerations using the Aspen Plus software package. The results revealed that Kaduna has the highest hydrogen generation potential of 0.148 million metric tons per year which could reduce CO2 emissions to 1.60 and 1.524 million metric tons by the dis‐ placement of an equivalent volume of gasoline and diesel. This amounts to cost savings of NGN 116 and 161.8 billion for gasoline and diesel respectively. In addition the results of the sensitivity analysis revealed that the steam‐to‐biomass ratio and the temperature of gasification are positively correlated with the amount of avoided CO2 emissions while the equivalence ratio shows a negative correlation.

With the rapid development of hydrogen production by water electrolysis the coupling between the electricity-hydrogen system has become closer providing an effective way to consume surplus new energy generation. As a form of centralized management of distributed energy resources virtual power plants can aggregate the integrated energy production and consumption segments in a certain region and participate in electricity market transactions as a single entity to enhance overall revenue. Based on this this paper proposes an optimal scheduling model of an electricity-hydrogen coupling virtual power plant (EHC-VPP) considering hydrogen load response relying on hydrogen to ammonia as a flexibly adjustable load-side resource in the EHC-VPP to enable the VPP to participate in the day-ahead energy market to maximize benefits. In addition this paper also considers the impact of the carbon emission penalty to practice the green development concept of energy saving and emission reduction. To validate the economy of the proposed optimization scheduling method in this paper the optimization scheduling results under three different operation scenarios are compared and analyzed. The results show that considering the hydrogen load response and fully exploiting the flexibility resources of the EHC-VPP can further reduce the system operating cost and improve the overall operating efficiency.

We report the development of new tools and methods for facile integration and meaningful representation of high throughput data generated by genome-wide analyses of the model cyanobacterium Synechocystis PCC6803 for future genetic engineering aiming at increasing its level of hydrogen photoproduction. These robust tools comprise new oligonucleotide DNA microarrays to monitor the transcriptomic responses of all 3725 genes of Synechocystis and the SVGMapping method and custom-made templates to represent the metabolic reprogramming for improved hydrogen production. We show for the first time that the AbrB2 repressor of the hydrogenase-encoding operon also regulates metal transport and protection against oxidative stress as well as numerous plasmid genes which have been overlooked so far. This report will stimulate the construction and global analysis of hydrogen production mutants with the prospect of developing powerful cell factories for the sustainable production of hydrogen as well as investigations of the probable role of plasmids in this process.

This study investigated a pre-cooled turbojet engine for a Mach 5 class hypersonic transport aircraft. The engine was demonstrated under takeoff and Mach 2 flight conditions and a Mach 5 propulsion wind tunnel test is planned. The engine is composed of a pre-cooler a core engine and an afterburner. The engine was tested under simulated Mach 4 conditions using an air supply facility. High-temperature air under high pressure was supplied to the engine components through an airflow control valve and an orifice flow meter and liquid hydrogen was supplied to the pre-cooler and the core engine. The results confirmed that the starting sequence of the engine components was effective under simulated Mach 4 conditions using liquid hydrogen fuel. The pre-cooling effect caused no damage to the rotating parts of the core engine in the experiment.