Current Projects

Laser Imaging of Turbine Engine Combustion Species (LITECS)

Our researchers join a team led by the University of Strathclyde on an £8 million research programme which aims ultimately to reduce the environmental impact of aviation and power generating gas turbine engines (GTEs).

The programme aims to deliver transformational combustion measurement and modelling tools to enable the development of low emission engine designs and the evaluation of new low emission fuels, reducing negative environmental impacts from jet engines.

Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation, and industry, the consortium, made up of the universities of Strathclyde, Edinburgh, Manchester, Southampton, Loughborough and Sheffield, builds on the achievements of a previous £2.8m programme which used newly-developed laser techniques to demonstrate, for the first time, 2D imaging of carbon dioxide in the exhaust plume of a full-scale commercial gas turbine aero-engine.

HYDESS

The HYDESS (Hydrogen for the Decarbonisation of Sheffield Steel) project seeks to decarbonise steel manufacturing sites across Sheffield. The projects features partners from E.ON UK,  The University of Sheffield – Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), Glass Futures, Sheffield Forgemasters, Chesterfield Special Cylinders and other large-scale industry partners from across Sheffield.

The HYDESS consortium was awarded funding from the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero (formerly Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy) under the NZIP Industrial Hydrogen Accelerator Programme to investigate the feasibility of producing green hydrogen to displace natural gas in steelmaking.

During the early stages of the project, the researchers found there is a strong desire from steelmakers and other industries to find a cleaner alternative to natural gas in industrial processes. Switching steelmaking to being fuelled by hydrogen could be commercially viable, the project found, and sustainable over the longer term. It could maintain the performance and product quality for manufacturers with carbon emissions 41.8 per cent lower than if using natural gas.

The project has now been awarded £1 million of further funding from the UK government – one of only two projects to receive such funding – to explore the commercial and engineering needs of generating, transporting and using hydrogen, as well as developing the commercial offer to industrial customers. If that is successful, the next stage will be a technical pilot project at the Blackburn Meadows site, with potential for future expansion if the project is taken forward to a full commercial demonstration.

FOCUSS

FOCUSS – Flexibly Operated Capture using Solvent Storage – aims to reduce the cost of achieving high capture levels from flexible power stations – a key tool in decarbonisation efforts. Key research activity for the project will take place at the University of Sheffield’s Translational Energy Research Centre.

The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) awarded grant funding of £515,000 to the FOCUSS project, which is led by SSE Thermal and supported by AECOM and the University of Sheffield, with the US-based National Carbon Capture Center (NCCC) also involved in the collaboration.

BEIS awarded the grant as part of its Carbon Capture Usage and Storage Innovation 2.0 competition, which aims to accelerate development of next-generation CCUS technology in the UK so that it can deploy at scale by 2030.

The primary objective of FOCUSS is to build on advances already known to reduce residual CO2 emissions from carbon capture and allow consistent capture levels of between 95 and 99 per cent to be achieved. Testing will take place at the University of Sheffield’s Translational Energy Research Centre.

UNICORN

The Translational Energy Research Centre is part of the ‘Pilot UNIt for CO2 filtRatioN’ or UNICORN project, which will be led by carbon capture company Nuada (MOF Technologies) in collaboration with TERC.

The project will showcase Nuada’s technology and demonstrate the ability of a new class of solid sorbents – absorbent materials used to capture impurities – called metalorganic frameworks (MOFs) to remove carbon from flue gas in an ultra-efficient way. Nuada is a carbon capture company that decarbonises heavy industries through next-generation point-source capture technology.

This research, using the innovative carbon capture technology developed by Nuada and the state-of-the-art equipment at TERC, will help to accelerate the decarbonisation of many industries which currently rely on fossil fuels. And because of the efficiency provided by Nuada’s technology, the cost of carbon capture could be significantly reduced.

Funding for this project was awarded through the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s £20 million CCUS Innovation 2.0 programme.

Investigating the impact of reducing the aromatic content of kerosene – Aromatics TAV14106

This project to investigate the impact of reducing the aromatic content of kerosene will explore the relationship between the aromatic content of jet fuel and contrail formation, and to establish if reducing the aromatic content of kerosene has a positive climate impact.

TERC will produce a technical report which sets out the benefits of reducing the aromatic content of kerosene on contrail formation, the safety considerations, cost implications and any potential CO2 trade-off.

UK BECCS-MCFC: Next generation CCUS technology for net-zero

This project will demonstrate the potential of biomass energy-with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) for wide-spread deployment.

Currently, CO2 is captured from the emitted gases (flue gases), produced from biomass combustion, using solvents. This is called post-combustion capture, PCC. Solvent-based PCC requires energy which results in a loss of efficiency. An alternative, emerging PCC technology centres around a molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) system. This project will use the MCFC at TERC, which is the first of it’s kind in the UK, having been made bespoke for TERC by US-based company FuelCell Energy.

An MCFC system generates power (and heat) from a second fuel source, at the same time as it separates CO2 and removes NOx from the flue gases, with option of producing hydrogen if required.

This BECCS-MCFC project will prove the MCFC technology for separating CO 2 from biomass-derived flue gases, and also its flexibility for power, heat and hydrogen production for the widespread deployment of BECCS-MCFC in the UK.

The BECCS –MCFC Project (TRL 3-6) will develop and showcase a novel commercially viable technology options for BECCS, suitable for deployment at scale.

UKCCSRC Projects

The Translational Energy Research Centre works closely with the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre (UKCCSRC) which is currently hosted at the University of Sheffield. There are several major overarching projects which began when TERC was in its previous iteration, PACT, which have the aim of developing understanding and technology for carbon capture, utilsations and storage.

The overall goal for the next phase of the UKCCSRC project is to help ensure that CCS will play an effective role in reducing net CO2 emissions while securing affordable and controllable electricity supplies, low carbon heat and competitive industries for the UK.

TERC will continue to provide a platform to support and catalyse academic R&D (with and without industrial collaborators) in order to accelerate the development and commercialisation of novel technologies for carbon capture and clean power generation and industrial sector. The focus of TERC during this phase will be on establishing pilot-scale second/third generation CO2 capture facilities to add to the capabilities of the centre and to support academia and industry to develop and demonstrate their novel technologies.