Fuelling The Future : From Materials Science To New Energy Conversion Systems

这项建议的理念是将认真、重点突出的基础研究与发展行动结合起来，努力提供能源技术的逐步进步，这些进步具有在工业发展中实施的现实可能性。通过参与欧洲氢和燃料电池平台的战略研究议程，该重点得到了充分的信息。我们的目标是提供一些必要的解决方案，以实现如下所述的新能源经济愿景。我们宁愿不选择核武器；然而，这只有在可再生能源和清洁能源技术能够很快证明确实存在可行的非核解决方案的情况下才有意义，因为我们不能让核技术处于备用状态太久，否则我们会失去能力。这可能是英国政府能源白皮书向我们的清洁能源社区提出的挑战。到2050年，廉价石油将不复存在，欧洲的内部储备将耗尽。越来越多的初级能源生产将来自可再生能源，如太阳能、风能、潮汐能和生物质能，可能辅以核能、天然气和煤炭。我们必须依靠新的能源载体，如氢气、沼气或合成燃料和液体生物燃料。这些载体将作为能源载体补充电力，在局部和更大范围内实现一定程度的能源效率优化。由广泛的可再生能源和清洁技术提供动力的分散式发电基础设施将被创建，其中包括强大的燃料电池组件。电力网络将主要基于独立的节点，每个节点由可再生能源和/或燃料电池系统组成。这种分散式系统的优点在于传输损耗更低，总能源效率更高，能源安全得到改善。这些节点将由一个高价值网络提供支持，该网络由先进的热能或核系统、水电、缓冲风力发电和燃料电池系统提供动力。我们的职责是开发高温电化学技术，使这种新能源经济的有效引入。我们的早期工作将寻求优化当前的燃料电池技术，提高耐用性和稳定性，降低制造成本，使其能够广泛推广。我们将开发新的阳极配方，以有效利用更复杂的燃料，包括天然气、液化石油气、沼气、液体生物燃料和生物质。有效利用生物质是新能源经济的核心，这将通过一系列机制实现。燃料电池技术是生物质利用的一个特别重要的推动者，在相当小的单位尺寸下提供高效率的转换，对新的分布式能源经济至关重要。如果能够保持良好的技术进步，固体氧化物燃料电池似乎肯定会在5-10年内对未来的能源经济做出重大贡献；然而，我们只把这看作是这项技术的一种表现。未来的发展与高效电解、新型系统和碳中性燃料生产有关。高效电解生产清洁氢对于在交通运输中利用可再生能源的可能性至关重要。类似的可逆燃料电池，经过仔细的热管理，可以为间歇性电源提供良好的缓冲。新材料的发现对于实现更高效的新技术非常重要，而基于其他陶瓷电解质（如质子甚至氢化物离子导体）的替代系统的开发则提供了更令人兴奋的进展。将二氧化碳或氮有效地转化为有用的无碳燃料可能是我们这个项目的最终目标。

The philosophy of this proposal is to bring together careful, focused basic studies with development actions to try to provide stepchange advances in Energy technology that have realistic possibility to be implemented in Industrial Development. The focus has been well informed by involvement in the Strategic Research Agenda of the European Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Platform. Our objective is to provide some of the solutions necessary to bring to fruition a vision of the new energy economy as stated below. We prefer not to follow the nuclear option; however, this only makes sense if renewable and clean energy technologies can demonstrate fairly soon that there does exist a viable non-nuclear solution, as we cannot leave Nuclear Technology on standby for very much longer, lest we lose capability. This is perhaps the gauntlet that the UK government Energy White Paper threw down for our clean Energy Community.By 2050 cheap oil will no longer be available and Europe's internal reserves will be exhausted. An increasing proportion of primary energy production will be from renewables such as solar, wind, tidal and biomass possibly supplemented by nuclear, natural gas and coal. We must rely on new energy carriers such as hydrogen, biogas or synfuels and liquid biofuels. These carriers will complement electricity as energy vectors, enabling some degree of energy efficiency optimisation, both on a local and a larger scale. A decentralised electricity generation infrastructure powered by a broad spectrum of renewable and clean technologies with a strong fuel cell component will have been created. The power network will largely be based upon self-contained nodes, each consisting of renewable and/or fuel cell systems. The advantages of this decentralised system arise from lower transmission losses, higher total energy efficiency and improved energy security. These nodes will be supported by a high value network powered by advanced thermal or nuclear systems, hydropower, buffered wind power and fuel cell systems. Our role is to develop high temperature electrochemical technologies to enable the efficient introduction of this new energy economy. Our early work will seek to optimise current fuel cell technology improving durability and stability and reducing cost of manufacture to enable widespread introduction. We will develop new anode formulations to enable efficient utilisation of more complex fuels, ranging from natural gas and LPG through biogas to liquid biofuels and biomass. Efficient utilisation of biomass is central to the new energy economy and this will be achieved by a range of mechanisms. Fuel cell technology is a particularly important enabler for biomass utilisation offering high efficiencies of conversion in fairly small unit sizes and is essential to the new distributed energy economy.Solid Oxide Fuel Cells seem certain to make a significant contribution to the future energy economy in 5-10 years, if good technological progress can be maintained; however, we only see this as one manifestation of this technology. Future development relates to efficient electrolysis, novel systems and carbon neutral fuel production. Efficient electrolysis to produce clean hydrogen is of key importance to the possibility of utilising renewable energy in transport. Similarly reversible fuel cells with careful thermal management can provide good buffering for intermittent power supplies. Discovery of new materials is important to achieving new more efficient technologies and the development of alternative systems based upon other ceramic electrolytes such as protonic or even hydride ion conductors offer even more exciting advances. The efficient conversion of carbon dioxide or nitrogen to useful carbon-free fuels is perhaps our ultimate goal in this project.