About Opportunity

The state of the art anode material used in Solid Oxide Fuel Cells is the Ni/YSZ ceramic-metal (cermet) composite (where YSZ = Y2O3/ZrO2) which has several difficulties in use. The anode is prepared as NiO/YSZ, and must be reduced to Ni/YSZ to work: this entails a large volumetric shrinkage, which can cause the cells to crack. Ni is a good catalyst for cracking hydrocarbon fuels, but tends to produce solid carbon, which then blocks the electrode, lowering performance and effective working life. The metallic Ni phase is also mobile and tends to sinter over time, again lowering performance.

Our technology overcomes these problems while achieving a comparable electrochemical performance, electrical and catalytic properties (significantly better when used with methane fuel). The new perovskite anode shows better tolerance to hydrocarbon fuels, without depositing carbon on the electrode. The perovskite anode can withstand more repeated cycling than a Ni/YSZ anode.

Key Benefits

• As effective as existing materials but without the problems such as cell cracking and reduced effective working life.
• Redox stable – no cracking on cycling.Highly tolerant of hydrocarbon fuels.
• Resistant to carbon deposition.No need for initial cell reduction.

Applications

• The perovskite anode can be used in any Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) instead of Ni/YSZ, where redox stability or hydrocarbon use is needed. This covers most applications of SOFCs.
• The University would welcome enquiries from commercial parties interested in developing commercial applications of fuel cells and fuel cell materials.

IP Status

The University of St Andrews has granted patents in Japan, USA, Canada, China, Australia and Europe (GB, France, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Austria and Germany) and continues to perform R&D in advanced materials for fuel cells. The University is looking for a licensee to the patents and knowhow or a commercial collaborator to take it to market. Patent Numbers: PCT/GB2003/003344, Granted patents: US 7,504,172 , Europe 1532710. Additional information can be made available under a confidentiality agreement.

About Opportunity:

Energy used by domestic and non-domestic buildings accounts for approximately 30% of UK carbon emissions, so there is significant opportunity for better management of building energy systems. Technological advances mean that innovative wireless sensors and metering systems can gather fine granularity data on building function and performance.

GCU have developed a building management system which continuously monitors sensors responsible for controlling environmental parameters; room temperature and humidity, air quality, lighting, room occupancy, power usage etc. The system is able to optimise these parameters through remote energy monitoring.

Key Benefits:

• More efficient building energy control
• Greater building energy efficiency
• Higher levels of occupant comfort
• Reduced building carbon footprint
• Lower building energy costs

Applications:

• Domestic building energy management system
• Non-domestic building energy management system
• Industrial control system
• Smart meters

IP Status:

A patent application has been filed to protect the technology and the University is seeking commercial partners interested in developing, licensing or exploiting this technology.

About Opportunity:

Energy efficiency is of increasing global importance for both ecological and economic reasons. The increasing awareness of the negative effects of global warming is not only motivating the development of renewable energy technologies, but also the search for efficient ways to reduce energy consumption. The latter is of particular importance due to the rising price of electrical energy. Street lighting, for example, costs c£500m per annum to power 7.5m homes in the UK, a figure which will increase substantially over the next few years. Cities and councils are trying to reduce both their costs and carbon footprint and have proposed some radical solutions such as switching off or dimming lights in some areas. This has obvious safety issues.

Conventional street lighting illumination sources suffer from a number of problems; short life-spans, low and/or poor quality light and light output and use of potentially harmful materials. Alternative solutions such as LED-based lamps have longer life-spans, emit better quality light and are more energy efficient, however they also have drawbacks. The main one is that current retrofit LED solutions for street illumination do not meet national and international standards. LED lamps installed in poles higher than 6m for instance fail to produce a footprint which complies with CIE, ISO and EN standards. They also suffer from poor thermal performance, have light output and efficiency issues.

The technology described here can be combined with LEDs to address these issues and produce uniformity of illuminanace and footprints of various defined diameter and shape.

Key Benefits:

• Uniformity of illumination
• Flexible and defined illumination footprint
• Energy savings
• Lower CO2 emissions
• Improved safety
• Conformance with national and international standards

Applications:

• Street lighting
• Optical wireless communications
• General illumination

IP Status:

The invention is protected by a UK patent application, priority date July 2016.

The university welcomes discussions with potential commercial licence or co-development partners.