A Staffordshire-based technology company is to help with new research into using green hydrogen to power up the UK’s ceramics sector.
The PRO-GREEN H2 programme investigates the feasibility of creating hydrogen energy for kilns from seawater and nitrogen.
It will be led by technology innovation catalyst CPI and involve Lucideon, which has its European headquarters in Penkhull, Stoke-on-Trent, and a research centre in Stone.
The company has been running a pilot kiln – operating at 20 per cent hydrogen – at the research centre since April.
As part of the programme, Lucideon will look at ceramic firing at up to 100 per cent hydrogen, testing a range of ceramic products and modelling adaptations at this level.
Jon Forster, Lucideon’s Materials Delivery Manager, said: “Decarbonising the ceramics sector by switching to green hydrogen would contribute to the UK meeting its CO2 mitigation targets and achieving the goals set out in the UK Hydrogen Strategy 2021.
“We will be looking at developing an on-site, on demand hydrogen generation system, using nitrogen and seawater as the components to convert to hydrogen.
“It is exciting research, which could deliver significant changes to ceramic production and wider industries.”
Michael Hughes, Senior Process Engineer at CPI, said: “We are currently developing several process engineering concept designs and assessing their economic viability to create low carbon products, as opposed to the natural gas firing of kilns.
“Once a concept has been selected, we will develop this further into an end-to-end system that we will evaluate, from a techno-economic perspective, with the hope to test at demonstration-scale in the future.”
PRO-GREEN H2 is funded through the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Net Zero Innovation Portfolio.
