Nottingham, UK: The University of Nottingham is kick-starting a £1m project to develop dual-use energy storage technology, capable of delivering hydrogen to a fuel cell and generating direct cooling for refrigeration.
Dual-use hydrogen energy storage could put the food cold chain on road to net zero, the university says.
The system would allow hydrogen power to become a key part of the UK’s sustainable energy future and to help decarbonise the UK’s food cold chain, which is responsible for 18% of the country’s total energy use.
The technology will target commercial food operations where refrigeration can be responsible for 30-60% of electricity usage (1.2% of the UK’s total CO2 emissions).
In addition to factories and processing plants, the UK food industry also operates 84,000 refrigerated trucks. Up to 24% of the power output of refrigerated trucks is required to meet refrigeration demand, resulting in significant CO2 emissions.
Successful implementation of the technology will reduce the UK food cold chain’s dependency on imported energy and accelerate the large-scale roll out of hydrogen fuel cells for HGVs. This could lead to more efficient vehicles and lower operating costs, potentially making the UK more economically competitive.
The project aims to produce a highly-efficient, innovative and cost-effective dual-use hydrogen storage technology that, due to its versatility, can be used in a range of industrial cooling processes.
Sanliang Ling, project lead, from the Advanced Materials Research Group said, “We aim to develop integrated hydrogen storage technologies that will simultaneously provide the controlled release of hydrogen to service fuel cell power needs and direct cooling.
Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the three-year project, which involves expertise from the Faculty of Engineering and Nottingham University Business School, has three key objectives:
• Formulate and validate a new intermetallic alloy suitable for dual-use hydrogen storage system for different applications in the UK food cold chain. Critical properties of the alloy include the hydrogen gravimetric/volumetric density and the pressure at which hydrogen can be supplied to a fuel cell across relevant cooling temperatures
• Design and develop a prototype dual-use intermetallic alloy based hydrogen store. The effective use of the store’s hydrogen and thermal capacities, system efficiency and cooling power of a dual-use hydrogen system will be tested under operational conditions commensurate with the requirements of commercial operators prevalent in the UK food cold chain
• Survey key operators in the UK food transport industry to identify barriers to using hydrogen technology to decarbonise current practices.
