Sustainable Product Engineering Centre for Innovative Functional Industrial Coatings - SPECIFIC

13ce9b16-a05f-40b5-b334-218328bad7ab

Closed

EPSRC
EPSRC
EPSRC
EPSRC
EPSRC

£25,060,525

March 31, 2011

July 31, 2016

In the UK there are more than four billion square metres of roofs and facades forming the building envelope. Most of this could potentially be used for harvesting solar energy and yet it covers less than 1.8 % of the UK land area. The shared vision for SPECIFIC is develop affordable large area solar collectors which can replace standard roofs and generate over one third of the UK's total target renewable energy by 2020 (10.8 GW peak and 19 TWh) reducing CO2 output by 6 million tonnes per year. This will be achieved with an annual production of 20 million m2 by 2020 equating to less than 0.5% of the available roof and wall area. SPECIFIC will realise this by quickly developing practical functional coated materials on metals and glass that can be manufactured by industry in large volumes to produce, store and release energy at point of use. These products will be suitable for fitting on both new and existing buildings which is important since 50% of the UKs current CO2 emissions come from the built environment.The key focus for SPECIFIC will be to accelerate the commercialisation of IP, knowledge and expertise held between the University partners (Swansea, ICL, Bath, Glyndwr, and Bangor) and UK based industry in three key areas of electricity generation from solar energy (photovoltaics), heat generation (solar thermal) and storage/controlled release. The combination of functionality will be achieved through applying functional coatings to metal and glass surfaces. Critical to this success is the active involvement in the Centre of the steel giant Corus/Tata and the glass manufacturer Pilkington. These two materials dominate the facings of the building stock and are surfaces which can be engineered. In addition major chemical companies (BASF and Akzo Nobel as two examples) and specialist suppliers to the emerging PV industry (e.g. Dyesol) are involved in the project giving it both academic depth and industrial relevance. To maximise open innovation colleagues from industry will be based SPECIFIC some permanently and some part time. SPECIFIC Technologists will also have secondments to partner University and Industry research and development facilities.SPECIFIC will combine three thriving research groups at Swansea with an equipment armoury of some 3.9m into one shared facility. SPECIFIC has also been supported with an equipment grant of 1.2 million from the Welsh Assembly Government. This will be used to build a dedicated modular roll to roll coating facility with a variety of coating and curing functions which can be used to scale up and trial successful technology at the pre-industrial scale. This facility will be run and operated by three experienced line technicians on secondment from industry. The modular coating line compliments equipment at Glyndwr for scaling up conducting oxide deposition, at CPi for barrier film development and at Pilkington for continuous application of materials to float glass giving the grouping unrivalled capability in functional coating. SPECIFIC is a unique business opportunity bridging a technology gap, delivering affordable novel macro-scale micro-generation, making a major contribution to UK renewable energy targets and creating a new export opportunity for off grid power in the developing world. It will ultimately generate thousands high technology jobs within a green manufacturing sector, creating a sustainable international centre of excellence in functional coatings where multi-sector applications are developed for next generation manufacturing.

Potential Impact:
The vision for SPECIFIC is a paradigm shift in energy generation through developing low cost macro scale micro generation systems based on a variety of architectural solutions to capture solar energy. The impact map for 2020 is summarised below and in the attached annex this is shown diagramatically together with pathways to achieving impact. SPECIFIC: will be a self funded research development and training facility: Employing 22 Technology Transfer fellows Hosting 30 students with partner universities Self funded revenue streams of 3m PA New equipment investment annually 200k SPECIFIC Wealth Creation; a major theme is creating a new green technology business in the UK based on energy from buildings Target 20 million m2 per annum solar energy manufacturing 500 (+) manufacturing jobs 1500 (+) supply industry jobs 5000 (+) installation sales maintenance jobs New billion pound manufacturing sector Export potential for off grid power SPECIFIC People; a key output are the potential employees and technologists for the proposed new industry sector Minimum of 40 high skilled postgrads 135 trained industry staff Established modular training programme New part time schemes for industry delegate SPECIFIC Knowledge; promotion of scientific endeavour is critical to attracting new partners 88 journal papers 44 conference papers 23 keynote lectures 26 patents registered New energy generating products New modular training courses SPECIFIC Society; the benefits will be local and global Security of energy supply macroscale microgeneration Solar power contributing to UK renewable energy mix Off-grid power for developing countries Environment; there is the potential for the technologies developed to make a major contribution to UK targets 20TWh renewable energy One third of the 2020 UK target Over 6 million tonnes per annum CO2 reduction