Inside the new Birmingham Energy Innovation Centre at Tyseley Energy ParkBy Joanna Sampsonon Jul 30 2021
Ağustos 2, 2021
Inside the new Birmingham Energy Innovation Centre
The University of Birmingham’s brand new £8.5m sustainable energy and innovation centre opened on July 19 at Tyseley Energy Park in Birmingham, UK – and H2 View was on site last week to get the full insight into the hydrogen and fuel cell research undertaken there.
Designed to promote innovation in waste, energy and low carbon vehicle systems, the Birmingham Energy Innovation Centre (BEIC) will focus particularly on hydrogen and fuel cells, energy storage, magnet and battery recycling, and converting waste to fuels and energy.
Inside the new Birmingham Energy Innovation Centre at Tyseley Energy ParkBy Joanna Sampsonon
The University of Birmingham’s brand new £8.5m sustainable energy and innovation centre opened on July 19 at Tyseley Energy Park in Birmingham, UK – and H2 View was on site earlier this week to get the full insight into the hydrogen and fuel cell research undertaken there.
Designed to promote innovation in waste, energy and low carbon vehicle systems, the Birmingham Energy Innovation Centre (BEIC) will focus particularly on hydrogen and fuel cells, energy storage, magnet and battery recycling, and converting waste to fuels and energy.
Working with existing energy and transportation system stakeholders, the BEIC will stimulate collaborative research and development projects to overcome local energy and low carbon transport challenges, demonstrating new and emerging technologies.
Innovations developed at the Centre will spin out into the city and region, as well as national and international markets.
By supporting the development and deployment of these new technologies at scale, the BEIC can help decarbonise electricity and heat, and improve the environmental performance of the Birmingham city as it seeks to achieve net zero CO2 emissions by 2030.
Having only been open for just over a week, the centre is currently preparing its labs and hanger for research projects to begin in the academic year when H2 View visited.
Some projects are already underway though, with one corner of the hanger dedicated to the University of Birmingham’s collaboration with Microcab.
The partnership dates back to 2008, when the UK’s first ever hydrogen station was opened on April 17 at the University of Birmingham.
A couple of months later, a fleet of five hydrogen-powered Microcabs was unveiled at the University of Birmingham – making it, at the time, the only university in the UK to run a fleet of vehicles powered in this way.
Designed and built by Microcab, the vehicles are used by the university’s School of Chemical Engineering to find out more about the viability of hydrogen in transport applications.
The current research going on today at the new BEIC is looking at developing the fuel cell stack.
“The older generation of Microcabs had a 1.2kW fuel cell and the second generation had 3kW. We are currently looking to add 5kW,” Dr. Yousif Al-Sagheer, Research Fellow at the Birmingham Centre for Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Research, based in the School of Chemical Engineering, explained to H2 View at the BEIC.
“If you compare this with cell part technology like what’s in the Toyota Mirai, it’s still behind that, but we are looking at a very niche area of research to test the control strategy we are developing on this system.
“You may say that 5kW is too low for the vehicle compared to the Toyota Mirai, but we are not looking on the size, we are looking at a very niche area on the research to develop optimal control strategies on the system.
So the 5kW would serve, I would say, the research purpose, but once it’s approved and on the lab, it can be applicable on larger scale as well.”
Novel approach
Al-Sagheer said the fuel cell system level research activities, which includes fuel cell sizing, integration and control, has been moved to the BEIC from the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Research, which H2 View also visited this week.
“We are focusing on control in our research,” Al-Sagheer explained.
“We have done research on balancing renewable energy fluctuations from a wind farm or a solar farm or any mix of solar energy sources using hydrogen as an energy vector.
“Basically, we convert surplus energy from renewables to hydrogen gas and storage to be used at a later time by using fuel cell to produce electricity again to compensate or to supply deficit on the grid.
“We developed a novel control approach within this technology. Compared to the old technologies, we have introduced a novel concept of using the battery, because any energy passing system would need a battery to be integrated too, so we have introduced a novel approach to use that battery.
“Instead of using the battery as an energy buffer, we use it an energy buffer as well as an energy sensor to quantify how much surplus we have on the generation side, which is important to do the balance in real time.
“Otherwise, all the approaches using model-based predictions based on a longer timetable of 30 minutes or one hour, that’s why you would need a very huge battery size to compensate for the protection.
“In our approach we don’t have this problem as we can use a very small compact battery and use it effectively in real time.
“The approach is to develop a control algorithm for hybrid fuel cell vehicle, that includes multiple energy sources on board the vehicle like fuel cell, the supercapacitor and a battery as well.
“We aim to have optimal sizing for this component to match the specific requirement for a vehicle based on lifecycle analysis.
“We are developing an optimal control strategy to use these energy sources on board vehicles at optimal conditions.
“Ultimately what we are seeking is the fuel economy and extending the lifetime of the system component, like extending the battery life time and fuel cell lifetime as well, and to reduce the maintenance required for the vehicle.”
As Editor of H2 View, Joanna oversees the editorial for all of H2 View’s efforts across its print and digital platforms. Previously, she was senior news journalist at gasworld, H2 View’s sister company, and before that she worked in regional UK press for four years.
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