The technology for the generation and usage of hydrogen as a fuel is established however as present the best way to store the hydrogen is to pressurise the gas to 350 bar and above. That is 350 times atmospheric pressure. This has cost and safety considerations. Handling high pressure hydrogen requires thick and heavy metal cylinders or bulky composite cylinders. Electrolysers driven by electricity from renewables or from the national grid can readily generate hydrogen but this is at low pressures. Thus mechanical gas compressors are needed to compress the gas to above 350 bar. Such mechanical compressors are expensive and require constant maintenance and storing large quantities of hydrogen at high pressure requires blast zones. Being able to store the majority of gas at low pressure utilising metal hydride (MH) solid state stores not only is safer but it requires much less volume of space. Also fuel cells (which convert hydrogen and oxygen to water and electricity) operate at these low pressures too. So for certain stationary applications storing hydrogen utilisng a low pressure MH store makes sense and this project will build a prototype and explore this market.

Lightweight crash management systems are of increasing importance for most forms of ground transport. Automotive OEMs like JLR have advanced aluminium automotive body designs but still depend on steel for bumper beams. For rail applications steel based crash systems predominate. Constellium has developed considerably stronger extrusion alloys based on the AA6xxx alloy system that are fully recycling compatible with the sheet used for automotive structures and body panels. Brunel University has developed alloys and casting technologies that enable extrusions and castings to be combined in novel ways to produce a new generation of compact lightweight crash management systems. The envisaged work programme will include a high strength alloy being combined with casting alloys using overcasting techniques and the use of bonded and riveted joints to demonstrate the potential for both increased crash resistance and weight saving. The project will demonstrate and evaluate optimised designs for crash management systems for both automotive and rail transport.

The project aims to develop appropriate technologies to enable magnesium alloy to be used as the primary material in the construction of a body-in-white structure to produce improved structural performance at reduced weight. Magnesium is the lightest structural metal available, 30% less dense than aluminium and is the eighth most abundant elements globally. Due to its inherent properties, use of sheet magnesium for vehicle structural applications will require hot-forming, increasingly being adopted by premium car manufacturers as it can produce larger and more complex panels. Morgan Motor Company intends to provide the initial route to market by adopting the developed technologies on its next generation of premium sports cars. The project consortium will become the basis of a new UK manufacturing supply chain.

This project will enable a step-change ina current manufacturing process called wet-filament winding where a significant reduction in the consumption of solvents can be achieved in conjunction with reductions in the volume of waste material generated. This in effect will transform the workplace in terms of air-quality and significantly reduce emissions to the atmosphere. In the new manufacturing technique, a conventional resin bath in not used. Instead, the components of the resin system are mixed on-demand and dispensed using the optimum volume to impregnate the fibres. Productivity and quality-imporvements will be obtained by: - a reduction in the impregnation time via fibre spreading. Proof-of-concept experiments have shown that the properties of filament wound composites produced using the new technique are equivalent to or better than those obtained using conventianal wet-filament winding. The socio-economic benefits of this proposal are very significant. A recent site trial has demonstrated that the so called clean filament winding technology can be retrofitted easily on conventional filament winding machines. The Exploitation Plan for the project consists of three strategies: - new build; - Retrofit; - End-users in the consortium.

Awaiting Public Summary

A major UK requirement for novel lightweight materials for applications in extreme and hostile environments has been identified. DCRC provides the process route to high performance aluminium products of compositions that can''t be made by conventional casting technologies. The process is applicable to aluminium slab and billet production and provides increased productivity with reduced downstream processing and lower costs. This proposal is focussed on process development and providing products for specific challenging materials applications requiring combinations of extreme strength and ductility, temperature stability, wear resistance and corrosion performance. This project is critical for process development and industrial adoption of these novel products. The industrially driven consortium has the materials, modelling, and engineering skills and experience for commercialising world-beating DCRC products within a few years.