Project Dragonfly will develop a cryogenic liquid hydrogen (LH2) flow control valve for use on the next generation of zero emission aircraft. The Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) identifies LH2 as the most promising solution for cost-effective zero-emissions flight. The project tackles a key barrier to the roll out of LH2 aircraft, lack of suitable valves, current solutions suffer from issues with flow capacity, size, weight and cycle life, or are susceptible to dangerous external leakage through worn valve stems. Making them unsuitable for hydrogen aircraft. Project lead Actuation Lab will work with Cranfield University to design the Dragonfly valve to meet customer/end-user specifications, developing the valves from TRL3 to 6 for ground-based demonstration by 2027\. Enabling hydrogen aviation through development of a hydrogen fuel valve without compromise.

Project Dragonfly will develop Actuation Lab's innovative, origami-inspired valve design to meet the challenging requirements of commercial hydrogen aircraft. Emissions from long-haul travel using kerosene aircraft fuel totalled 336 million tonnes CO2e in 2019\. Converting this fleet to hydrogen is a potentially viable alternative that would eliminate these emissions and create a lucrative market. We estimate that the potential market for valves in hydrogen powered aircraft exceeds £230m. However, there are several key technical challenges to using liquid hydrogen as an aircraft fuel that must be addressed to take advantage of this opportunity. These include hydrogen's low-ignition energy, its small molecule size making systems vulnerable to leakage and the low temperatures required for liquid hydrogen use (cryogenic). The Dragonfly Valve's leak proof design addresses these issues and has potential to enable transition to hydrogen by 2050\. Current valve designs are vulnerable to leakage where the valve stem exists the fuel tank to enable actuation. Our stemless design is a completely new technology that addresses a real limitation of competitor technologies. Project Dragonfly will address the technical challenges relating to specific operating conditions for aircraft valve use. These include understanding valve performance at very low temperatures, compliant materials and addressing issues with icing. We will need to explore novel composite materials and manufacturing methods in order to ensure the Dragonfly valve can meet these requirements. We will work with end-user Airbus to ensure research and development is in-line with customer needs, to ensure a clear route to commercialisation and to ensure access to an appropriate hydrogen test-bed. Our research partner University of Strathclyde National Manufacturing Institute of Scotland (NMIS) will support on integration which is an important area of new industrial research needed for this application.

Actuation Lab is engineering the world's most powerful actuators for extreme environments. Actuators are engineered devices that make machines move. Actuation Lab has developed a revolutionary fluid powered actuator technology, the Callimorph, designed from the ground up to best exploit the unique properties of modern composite materials. The ultra-lightweight Callimorph is composed of a single part, eliminating the sliding seals that cause so many issues in traditional piston actuators, while also exhibiting the excellent specific strength and corrosion resistance inherent to composite materials. The result is a high-performance maintenance free actuator, able to survive in the world's dirtiest, dustiest and saltiest environments. The Callimorphs survivability in extreme environments is of great interest to the marine, Oil and Gas and offshore renewable energy industries, where this technology has the potential to reduce costly failures and maintenance while extending product life and reducing hazards and costs associated with handling bulky traditional actuators. This project entails taking the Callimorph from a TRL 4 demonstrator to a TRL 7 product, ready for in-service testing. This project is a collaboration between Actuation Lab Ltd and the National Composites Centre.

COVID-19 has shown how fragile our reliance on manual labour for operation and maintenance of industrial assets and infrastructure can be. As organisations recover from COVID-19 and look to improve resilience by automating more aspects of their operation, it's critical that the automation solutions they employ have a positive environmental impact. Across a host of different sectors, from water treatment to oil & gas, valves are used to regulate the flow of fluids in pipes, surprisingly, around 60% of valves are still manually operated. Although automated valves are an established technology, current solutions have three major issues that make them unsustainable for use in a net-zero world: 1. **High emissions:** The stems that connect actuators to valves are inherently susceptible to leaking, if the pipeline is carrying powerful greenhouse gases like natural gas (methane) then this is a major problem. These leaks contribute to fugitive emissions, it is thought such emissions from a range of sources could be equivalent to 5% of total global GHG emissions. Leaking valves are responsible for 60% of all fugitive GHG emissions from industrial processes. 2. **Poor flow efficiency:** Many valves, even when open, restrict the flow of fluid within them, adding greatly to the pumping requirements in water and waste treatment networks. It is reported that in the US alone, 30TWh of energy, equivalent to the entire electricity usage of Scotland, could be saved through the use of valves with more efficient flow paths. 3. **Poor operational efficiency:** On account of the high torque and speed demands, 60% of automated valves are forced to employ pneumatic or hydraulic actuators with just a quarter the operating efficiency of modern electric actuators. Actuation Lab has developed a design for an entirely new form of automated valve that addresses these deficiencies. Called the SL valve, it is designed to provide zero-resistance, full flow operation when open and exceptionally low operating torque requirements, enabling efficient electric motor driven actuation and stem-less torque transmission. A flow control solution for a net-zero future.