SPECIFIC Tranche 2: Heat, Water, PV and Bio-inspiration

每天落在地球表面的太阳能量比全人类 27 年来使用的量还要多。此时我们几乎没有采取任何行动来收获这种能量。建筑物是能源的主要消耗者，但它们通常采用金属和玻璃覆盖，这两种材料都可以进行复杂的工程设计。在英国，用于建筑外立面的金属和玻璃的年产量约为 3 亿平方米。 SPECIFIC作为创新和知识中心（IKC）的目标是快速采用英国大学已展示的优秀小型设备，扩大其应用并确保其稳定性，以便建筑物的外部可以成为活跃的表面，从本质上将建筑物转变为发电站。关键特征是将技术结合起来，使面板能够产生、储存和释放能量。这将为英国创造一个全新的制造业，并为我们的可再生能源目标和减少二氧化碳排放做出重大贡献。在头两年里，SPECIFIC开发了一个完整的试点制造设施，能够在任何基材（玻璃、钢、铝、石膏板、木材）上制造1平方米的功能性涂层材料面板，这些面板可应用于示范规模的建筑。这些生产设施建立在世界一流的实验室之上，这些实验室是 IKC 为期 9 个月的启动阶段的一部分。三个主要概念已经发展了相当大的势头，是该项目下一阶段的重点；(1)“热瓷砖”概念是一种功能性涂层，它使用直流电来加热过去 15 年建造的办公室、学校、医院和超市等大多数建筑物中常见的活动地板面板。它允许新建和改造低能耗电加热系统，从而消除对气体连接和湿法交易的需要。(2)一种新的热处理方法已应用于用作光伏开发一部分的二氧化钛涂层，该方法能够烧结薄膜（使其坚固），同时保留高光活性所需的晶体结构和表面积。该产品已被用作单层太阳能净水涂料，将染色水的脱色时间从 11 小时缩短至 4 分钟。这在英国纺织品生产的发展中国家有着明显的应用。(3) 新兴光伏技术；该中心与巴斯夫合作开发了一种创新的固态染料敏化太阳能电池设计。该项目中的大部分学习内容（在电极设计和器件优化方面）可直接转移到其他新兴太阳能电池类型，例如地球上丰富的由铜、锌、锡和硫制成的光伏电池（由于不含稀有或有毒元素，因此很有吸引力）或 2012 年首次报道的钙钛矿介观太阳能电池。这项工作的大部分将在 IKC 进行，该项目由威尔士政府最近宣布的 Ser Cymru（威尔士）拨款 600 万英镑资助。星）计划。此外，在一个业余项目中，该团队开发了一种基于疏水蛋白的新型自清洁表面，可用于提供超疏水或亲水表面。这些在建筑物的太阳能设备以及许多其他领域有明显的应用，并且与曼彻斯特大学在为期一年的名为 Bio-Coat 的可行性研究中进行了第四项合作。

Every day more solar energy falls on the Earth's surface than the whole of human kind will use in 27 years. At this point we do little to harvest this energy. Buildings are major consumers of energy and yet they are often clad in metal and glass, both materials which can be capable of sophisticated engineering. In the UK annual production of metal and glass for construction of the outside faces of buildings is running at around 300 million square metres per annum. The aim of SPECIFIC as an Innovation and Knowledge Centre (IKC) is to rapidly adapt excellent small scale devices that have been demonstrated in UK universities, scale up their application and ensure their stability so that the outsides of building can become active surfaces, essentially converting buildings into power stations. The key feature will be to combine technologies such that the panels will generate, store and release energy. This will create a whole new manufacturing sector for the UK as well as making a serious contribution towards our renewable energy targets and reducing carbon dioxide emissions.In the first two years the SPECIFIC has developed a full pilot manufacturing facility to enable the manufacture of 1 square metre panels of functional coated materials on any substrate (glass, steel, aluminium, plasterboard, wood) which can be applied to buildings at demonstration scale. These production facilities build on the world class labs that were part of the 9 month start up phase for the IKC. Three principal concepts have developed considerable momentum and are the focus for the next phase of the project;(1) the 'hot tile' concept is a functional coating that uses DC electricity to heat raised access floor panels common in most buildings such and offices, schools, hospitals and supermarkets built in the last 15 years. It allows for new build and retrofitting of a low energy electrical heating system that can eliminate the need for a gas connection and wet trades.(2) a new heat treatment method has been applied to a titanium dioxide coating used as part of the photovoltaic development which is able to sinter the film (making it robust) whilst at the same time retaining the crystal structure and surface area required for high photoactivity. This has been used as a single coat solar water purification coating which has reduced the decolouration time of dyed water from 11 hours to 4 minutes. This has obvious applications in developing countries where UK textiles are manufactured.(3) emerging PV technologies; the centre has developed an innovative solid state dye sensitised solar cell design in conjunction with BASF. Much of the learning in this project (in terms of electrode design and device optimisation) is directly transferable to other emerging solar cell types such as the earth abundant PV made of copper, zinc, tin and sulphur (attractive since it contains no rare or toxic elements) or the perovskite meso-scopic solar cell first reported in 2012. Much of this work will be conducted at the IKC funded by a recently announced £6m grant from the Welsh Government under the Ser Cymru (Welsh Stars) programme. In addition, in a side project the team have developed a novel self cleaning surface based on hydrophobins which can be applied to provide an ultra-hydrophobic or hydrophilic surface. These have obvious applications in solar devices on buildings as well as a number of other areas and a fourth strand of work with Manchester University in a one year feasibility study entitled Bio-Coat.