At current global mortality rates over 60 million people will die this year. Cremation is the leading funeral process in the world. Cremating a 100kg body produces 180kg of CO2 as well as atmospheric pollution with heavy metals. Traditional Burial with its memorials, cemeteries and ongoing maintenance has the greatest long term impact on the environment of all funeral processes. The world population is forecast to grow to over nine billion by 2050. Cryomation is a zero emission alternative to Cremation, developed through an award winning KTP at the University of Hertfordshire, which uses Liquid Nitrogen, freeze drying and accelerated composting to produce sterile human remains. The process has no fossil fuel burning incinerators, no harmful effluent streams and the remains can be buried in a much smaller space than other burial processes. The remains disappear to nothing, so burial land can be reused. The remains are ideal for "green" funerals and burial under trees, remains can be scattered or taken home in a pot, supporting the life of a memorial plant. Cryomation Ltd has already proven the science behind the process under the KTP and confirmed the feasibility of delivering the process commercially, as well as the consumer and industry support for Cryomation, through an Innovate UK Smart funded proof of market project. Cryomation has successfully confirmed the engineering challenges in delivering the automated cryogenic batch process can be overcome, through an Innovate UK funded Industrial Research project and will now move to a full prototype build. Successful completion of the project will see the world's first fully automated Cryomation unit.

CEMZEP would develop the Dearman Engine - a unique, UK-based, zero emission technology that can significantly reduce the environmental impact of a growing number of heavy goods vehicles and buses on the world's roads. Initialy it can replace lightly regulated and polluting diesel engines in global transport refrigeration. The technology can then be applied to auxiliary power and cooling units for the global bus and coach market, where up to 40% of fuel can be used to provide A/C. In more efficient form, it can provide propulsion either as a prime mover or as a hybrid with an ICE, fuel cell or battery system, delivering up to 20% fuel savings. The project builds on substantial private and UK Government investment, working with the UK supply chain to research improvements to the technology, its applications and manufacturing techniques; creating substantial exports and significant numbers of jobs. Crucially, as a low cost zero emision technology, the Dearman Engine can have an immediate impact on diesel emisions, while supporting the introduction of electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel cells and putting the UK at the forefront of real world emissions reduction.

This project will deliver a production-feasible waste heat recovery system for urban commercial vehicles, which offers life-cycle CO2 savings of up to 40%, fuel savings up to almost 50%, and potential payback in less than three years. The project uses the Dearman Engine, a high efficiency liquid-air expander that uniquely harvests low grade heat sources and is most effective in urban duty cycles, working with the internal combustion engine as a hybrid. In so doing, more efficient and less transient ICE operation is realised, leading not only to higher efficiency but to potential for improved air quality or simplified aftertreatment. The technology uses readily available materials with low embedded carbon, and operates with commercially available liquid nitrogen which is already produced using off-peak electricity and has great potential for storing “wrong-time” renewables. Bringing together expertise in the Dearman system, industrial gases, IC engines, vehicle systems, legislation and standards and manufacturing, the consortium will advance TRL, MRL and develop an exploitation plan. This will be achieved through an on vehicle demonstration of the system alongside a process of engaging the potential supply, demand and legislative chains. The project creates significant UK advantage in a future urban medium/heavy duty vehicle market of over 3 million units per year.

The Cool-E project will develop a cost-effective, low carbon system for recovering waste heat to useful power, using the Dearman Engine and liquid nitrogen (LN2) as a fuel. The project will be based on application of the system to a refrigerated truck, a promising early market with potential to offer 80-90% reduction in CO2 emissions from refrigeration, and payback in 12 months of operation. However, the project will also validate the installation of an LN2 system and Dearman Engine on a moving vehicle for the first time, supporting further applications such as waste heat recovery from internal combustion engines (ICEs) for propulsive power, and zero-emission propulsion. These applications will be studied analytically with validation from the vehicle work, to develop a vision for routes to market. Though widely used in industry (and available through existing infrastructure), LN2 is only just beginning to attract widespread interest as an energy vector. John Hayes, former Energy and Climate Change Minister recently wrote that “liquid air has the potential to open a global market worth tens of billions of pounds”. This project brings together world class engineering partners with global reach from the private sector and academia alongside representatives of early adopters to ensure both rigour and market fit.