Britain’s Energy Research Accelerator showing results

John Murray Brown writes in the Financial Times about the impact of energy research collaboration by six universities in the Midlands.

Midlands universities in cold energy tie-up

A prototype refrigerated lorry cooled by liquid nitrogen, not diesel, is set to be the first beneficiary of a £60m energy research collaboration by six Midlands universities.

The Energy Research Accelerator, first announced in March and being finalised ahead of George Osborne’s July Budget, aims to help entrepreneurs and academics bring their inventions to commercial use.

The research into cold energy products is expected to create 10,000 jobs by 2025, exploiting the demand for thermal technologies to meet growing global demand for cooling in food and drug distribution, as well as in air conditioning systems in buildings such as data centres.

“This is what some people are calling the economy of cold,” says Professor Richard Williams, head of the College of Engineering at the University of Birmingham, which is linking up with Nottingham, Warwick, Loughborough, Aston and Leicester universities.

The research collaboration is part of the region’s response to the English devolution debate, and the perception that the Midlands was losing out to Manchester and the so-called Northern Powerhouse in attracting government funding.

Sir David Greenaway, vice-chancellor of the University of Nottingham, says the Midlands is “at risk of being seen as somewhere decision-makers fly over between the south and the north”.

His counterpart at Birmingham university, Sir David Eastwood, says it is felt the research initiative “would probably fly better coming from the universities than being mediated by local authorities”.

Prof Williams says: “In the next 25 years we are going to be using 37 per cent more energy than we’re using now and that has enormous challenges associated with it in the cost of the energy, the energy security issues and the need to address climate change. So we wanted to do something that would accelerate these new technologies, so that they could contribute more strongly.”

The first “demonstrator” project involves Dearman Engine Company, a four-year-old venture capital-backed start-up. It is testing its refrigerated lorry product at the Mira circuit near Nuneaton in Warwickshire and expects to have it in use on a trial on public roads with a large food haulier this year. With the help of the accelerator, the company expects to be in commercial production by 2019.

“We talk about electricity and heat but we forget about cold,” says Toby Peters, chief executive of Dearman, which was founded by the inventor Peter Dearman.

Mr Peters says about 16 per cent of UK electricity production is for cooling, 70 per cent of food we eat is either chilled or frozen, and refrigeration accounts for 20 per cent of total vehicle diesel consumption.

The science of so-called cryogenic liquids — liquids stored at very low temperatures — has been around a long time with the Liquid Air Company of Boston testing a liquid nitrogen-powered car in 1902.

The Dearman engine uses much the same technology, with a simple piston driven by the expansion of the liquid nitrogen when heated and gasified.

The company is working with Hubbard Products, the refrigeration systems manufacturer, as well as a range of industrial gas companies, supermarkets and transport companies.

Mr Peters believes cooling system technologies are not only a substitute for dirty diesel, but are more practical than green energy solutions such as batteries and hydrogen fuel cells.

Liquid nitrogen — unlike hydrogen, which requires an infrastructure of filling stations — is readily available in all big cities as a byproduct of the industrial gas industry.

“You’re clearly not going to drive a Tesla [electric car] on a Dearman engine, but where you want cold and power — in supermarkets, in data centres, or in transport — then we believe this is cheaper, cleaner and more functional,” Mr Peters says.

In the UK there are 84,000 refrigerated lorries on the road. Globally, there are between 2.5m and 4m and the growth in the lorry fleet is expected to rise to 15m in the next 10 years in line with the growing middle classes in China and India.