Metal Fuels for Zero-Carbon Heat and Power

为了减缓气候变化，在化石燃料生产有限的未来提供安全的能源供应，社会必须向低碳经济过渡。清洁的一次发电，来自太阳能、风能、水力发电或其他来源，经过技术验证，与化石燃料系统相比，成本竞争力越来越强。更具挑战性的是开发技术，以高能量密度储存这种清洁的一次能源，用于长期备用和长途可再生能源贸易，或为重型车辆和机械提供燃料，包括长途卡车和轮船。我的小组正在研究所有可能的替代燃料选择，以满足这一紧迫需求。*目前的发现资助(DG)提案建立在我们在生物燃料燃烧和污染物排放特性以及通过过去的DG开发的新型燃烧技术方面的专业知识的基础上，并专注于我们令人兴奋的、新颖的概念，即燃烧金属燃料，以空气或水作为零碳能源载体。金属燃料提供极高的能量和功率密度，潜在的零污染物排放，我正在领导一项全球努力，将金属燃料作为一种技术和经济上优于电池或广泛探索的氢经济的概念。我们最近发表了一篇关于金属作为可回收燃料的开创性论文，受到了国际媒体的高度关注，目前正在推动一项关于金属燃料的新的国际研究工作。在过去的5年里，我们比世界上任何其他研究小组都更深入地推进了我们对金属燃料悬浮液中火焰的理解。本DG的研究将建立在这一坚实的基础上，以解决与金属燃烧有关的基础和应用研究问题，以及将金属用作零碳可回收燃料。我们还领导了利用高温金属-水反应/燃烧作为一种新的方法来生产热氢的研究工作，用于各种电力应用。在这个DG中，我们将把这些实验推进到超临界水条件下，在那里预计会有超乎寻常的产氢率和产量。我相信金属燃料将是我们低碳未来的重要组成部分，本DG提出的研究可以帮助我们过渡到低碳经济，对我们的全球经济和环境产生重大积极影响。*我的研究计划是由我有幸监督的HQP伟大团队提供的，并为他们提供了重要而独特的培训机会。这些HQP将从基础科学到开发商业化原型，这样他们的经验将从理论到实践。这些HQP将获得技术、口头和书面沟通技能，这些技能将使他们在毕业后从事任何职业时都能取得成功。

In order to mitigate climate change and provide secure energy supplies in a future of limited fossil-fuel production, society must transition to a low-carbon economy. Clean primary electricity generation, from solar, wind, hydroelectric, or other sources, is technologically proven and increasingly cost competitive with fossil-fuelled systems. Much more challenging is the development of technologies to store this clean primary energy at high energy densities for long-term backup and long-distance renewable-energy trade, or to fuel heavy-duty vehicles and machinery, including long-distance trucks and ships. My group is researching all possible alternative fuel options to address this urgent need. ******The present Discovery Grant (DG) proposal builds off of our expertise in biofuel combustion and pollutant-emission properties, as well as novel combustion technologies, developed through the past DG, and focuses on our exciting and novel concept of burning metal fuels, with either air or water, as zero-carbon energy carriers. Metal fuels provide extremely high energy and power densities with potentially zero pollutant emission and I am leading a worldwide effort to promote metal fuels as a technically and economically superior concept to either batteries or the widely explored hydrogen economy. We recently published a ground-breaking paper on metals as recyclable fuels, which received significant international media attention and is now driving forward a new international research effort on metal fuels. In the last 5 years, we have pushed forward our understanding of flames in metal-fuel suspensions further than any other research group in the world. The research in this DG will build off of this strong foundation to tackle fundamental and applied research questions related to metal combustion, in general, and the use of metals as zero-carbon recyclable fuels. We are also leading the research effort to use high-temperature metal-water reactions/combustion as a novel method to produce hot hydrogen for a variety of power applications. Within this DG, we will push these experiments to supercritical water conditions where exceptional hydrogen-production rates and yields are expected. I believe that metal fuels will be an essential part of our low-carbon future and the research proposed in this DG can help us transition to a low-carbon economy, with major positive impacts on our global economy and the environment. ******My research program is enabled by, and provides significant and unique training opportunities for, the great team of HQP that I have the privilege of supervising. These HQP will work from fundamental science to developing prototypes for commercialization, such that their experience will span from theory to practice. These HQP will gain the technical, and oral and written communication, skills that will enable their success in whatever career they pursue after graduation.