The Henry Royce Institute (Royce) has published the Second Edition to its ‘Research Success in Hydrogen’ report, bringing together a diverse collection of translational research projects from across the hydrogen supply chain.
Since 2022, Royce has funded a total of 43 projects through two of its exciting programmes: the Industrial Collaboration Programme (ICP) and the Materials Challenge Accelerator Programme (MCAP), which are listed in the report. Alongside these projects, Research Success in Hydrogen showcases particularly successful or innovative projects, new and updated, that address key challenges to delivering a functioning UK hydrogen ecosystem in line with 2050 Net Zero targets.
Many of the projects included collaborators from industry partners like Rolls-Royce, BP, and Johnson Matthey, and Airbus, as well as an academic partner from across the national region, including 13 UK universities and 7 Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs).
Facilitating a Hydrogen-Forward UK Energy System
Despite increased investment by industry to meet Net Zero ambitions, many energy-intensive industries like long-distance aerospace, marine, steel, glass and petrochemicals face a significant barrier to reducing emissions: they cannot all be electrified.
Hydrogen has been proposed as a viable energy source and storage alternative that could enable these industries to meet Net Zero targets, transforming our ability to tackle the climate crisis.
Recognising the significant potential of a hydrogen energy infrastructure, the UK government and industry are increasingly looking to mature the country’s capabilities and leverage expertise from its research community. As a result, there have been advancements in improving the efficiency, durability and performance monitoring of hydrogen-related technologies.
Royce has remained a strong driver of this effort; so far, we have delivered over £5 million of funding to projects covering the breadth of the hydrogen supply chain with partners throughout the sector. These projects are designed to tackle issues in the production, storage, distribution, use and operational monitoring of hydrogen.
“Royce is the UK’s national centre for materials innovation, it is ideally placed to facilitate the discussions needed between industry, academia and government and help unlock the technology solutions and attract the funding public and private needed to deliver the innovative solutions required.”
– Robert Sorrell, Royce Hydrogen Challenge Lead
Establishing a Hydrogen Economy
As part of a 2021 report, ‘Materials for End-to-End Hydrogen’, Royce collaborated extensively with a diverse range of stakeholders from across industry and academia to isolate major materials challenges limiting the establishment of a hydrogen economy.
These barriers, grouped as the Hydrogen Materials Challenges, are crucial to the delivery of a functioning UK hydrogen ecosystem in line with 2025 Net Zero targets and will enable hydrogen to be produced, distributed, stored, used and monitored at scale.
The 14 case studies included in this report cover align with these challenges and detail innovative research from developing novel coating strategies to allow existing gas distribution infrastructure to be repurposed for hydrogen, to improving aerospace alloys to enable the transition toward liquid hydrogen as an aerospace fuel.
Royce is committed to the development of a strong UK hydrogen ecosystem and is actively seeking materials-based solutions to key hydrogen challenges through its multi-million-pound investment programmes.
“There are gaps in the innovation chain between someone coming up with a critical technology capable of unlocking a materials challenge facing hydrogen and the path by which this could be commercialised. To be successful we will need a combination of innovative technology solutions and an infrastructure that allows us to scale these at pace to deliver economically feasible solutions.”
– Robert Sorrell, Royce Hydrogen Challenge Lead
To learn more about how Royce is supporting the advancement of the UK’s hydrogen ecosystem, visit our ICP, MCAP and Hydrogen Accelerator programme pages.
Research Success in Hydrogen: Second Edition is freely available to access here.
The report was commissioned by the Henry Royce Institute and produced in partnership with Urban Foresight. Urban Foresight is a multidisciplinary innovation practice dedicated to accelerating the next generation of technologies, services and policy frameworks for places. They work with ambitious organisations around the world on projects that improve lives, protect the environment and boost local economies.
