UKCCSRC Spring Conference Resources (Sheffield, 20-21 April 2022)

Our face-to-face Spring Conference took place 20-21 April 2022 in Sheffield, with in-person and virtual attendees.

Recordings, slides and posters (where we have permission to share them) can be found below.

Jump to:

Here’s the agenda:

Day 1 – Wednesday 20 April 2022

TimeActivity
11:00-12:30Registration, lunch and networking
12:30-13:00Welcome and Introduction

Jon Gibbins, UKCCSRC
Mohamed Pourkashanian, TERC and University of Sheffield

One minute’s silence

13:00-13:30Keynote

Alex Milward, BEIS

13:30-14:00Coffee break
14:00-15:30Plenary session 1: UK ongoing capacity initiatives

Joanna Watt, EPSRC
Jen Roberts, UKCCSRC
Mercedes Maroto-Valer, IDRIC
Mathieu Lucquiaud, University of Sheffield
Ruth Herbert, CCSA
Chaired by Richard Marsh, UKCCSRC

15:30-16:00Coffee break
16:00-17:00Parallel session 1A: UKCCSRC Core Research Programme – Capture

David Danaci, Imperial College London
Mathieu Lucquiaud, University of Sheffield
Stuart Scott, University of Cambridge
Chaired by Solomon Brown, UKCCSRC

16:00-17:00Parallel session 1B: UKCCSRC Core Research Programme – Storage

Sam Krevor, Imperial College London
Stuart Gilfillan, University of Edinburgh
Adam Butler, University of Cambridge
John Williams, BGS
Chaired by Stuart Haszeldine, UKCCCSRC

16:00-17:00Parallel session 1C: UKCCSRC Core Research Programme – Systems and Policy

David Reiner, UKCCSRC
Piera Patrizio, Imperial College London
Goran Strbac, Imperial College London
Chaired by David Reiner, UKCCSRC

17:00 – 18:30Poster session and networking reception
18:30-19:00Walk to dinner venue
19:00-22:00Conference dinner (Firth Court)

James Watt, WSP

Day 2 – Thursday 21 April 2022

TimeActivity
08:30-09:00Arrivals and coffee
09:00-10:15Parallel session 2A: UKCCSRC Flexible Funded Research Programme

Ed Lester, University of Nottingham – Pilot Scale Carbon Capture using Solid Sorbents PICASSO
Ben Petrovic, Brunel University London – Biomass Combustion Ash in Carbon Capture
Mike Gorbounov, Brunel University London – Techno-economics of Biomass Combustion Products in the Synthesis of Effective Low-cost Adsorbents for Carbon Capture
Xin Liu, University of Nottingham – Scalable step-change carbon materials achieving high CO2 adsorption capacity and selectivity at practical flue gas temperatures for potential breakthrough cost reductions
Vincenzo Spallina, University of Manchester – CLYCHING: CLean hYdrogen and CHemicals production via chemical loopING
Chaired by Lindsay-Marie Armstrong, University of Southampton

09:00-10:15Parallel session 2B: UKCCSRC Flexible Funded Research Programme

Allison Schaap, National Oceanography Centre – Sensor Enabled Seabed Landing AUV nodes for improved offshore Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) monitoring
Kranthi Jonnalagadda, Cranfield University – Recovering liquefaction cost of captured carbon dioxide by cold energy utilisation and electric power generation
Julia Race, University of Strathclyde- The Role of CCUS in Industry Clusters in Delivering Value to the Political Economy
Stuart Gilfillan, University of Edinburgh – Resolving CO2 trapping and tracking COmigration in the Carbon Management Canada Field Research Station, Canada, using inherent tracing tools
Chaired by Ben Wetenhall, UKCCSRC

09:00-10:15Parallel session 2C: UKCCSRC Flexible Funded Research Programme

Peter Clough, Cranfield University – Fugitive amine emission scrubbing using electrostatic precipitation
Yong Yan, University of Kent – Monitoring of CO2 Flow under CCS Conditions through Multi-Modal Sensing and Machine Learning
Eni Oko, Newcastle University – Development of an energy-efficient and cost-effective catalytic regeneration system in the post-combustion COcapture process
Minos Epameinondas, University of Sheffield – Understanding the Impact of Solvent Degradation on PCC Operation
Richard Porter, University College London – Optimising Methanol Production from Steel Manufacture Off-gases
Chaired by Abby Samson, University of Sheffield

10:15-10:45Coffee break
10:45-12:15Plenary session 2: Capacity development within clusters – CO2 transport and storage plans

Ben Kek, East Coast cluster
Kirsty Lynch, Scotland cluster
Matthew Rhodes, Black Country cluster
Lindsay-Marie Armstrong & Tamara Topic, Solent cluster
Rachel Sutton, North West cluster
Chris Williams, South Wales cluster
Andrew Hood, Harbour Energy
Chaired by Jon Gibbins, UKCCSRC

12:15-12:30Keynote and closing remarks

Bryony Livesey, UKRI

12:30-14:00Lunch and departures

Recordings and slides (where we have permission to share them) will be added below as they become available.

Speaker & chair biographies (A-Z)

Lindsay-Marie Armstrong, University of Southampton
Lindsay-Marie Armstrong is an Associate Professor within the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Southampton. She is the Academic Lead for the Solent Industrial Decarbonisation Cluster; and Director of Student Recruitment for School of Engineering. She has a BSc Mathematics degree and MSc in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). In 2012, she completed her PhD which developed reactive multiphase models for thermochemical conversion processes within coal and biomass fluidised beds, and upon completion was awarded a New Frontiers Fellowship at the University of Southampton. She established, and Chaired, the University of Southampton Clean Carbon University Strategic Research Group (USRG), a network of over 150+ academic and industrial partners. She has extensive knowledge of reactive multiphase modelling, particularly for carbon capture and utilisation technologies. She has numerous highly cited articles in leading journals, in addition to leading international conferences. Awards include the Institute of Physics 2011 ‘Award for significant progress in Combustion by an early career researcher’ and the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment’s ‘Dean’s award for Early Career Excellence’.

Solomon Brown, UKCCSRC and University of Sheffield
Prof. Solomon Brown is a Professor of Process and Energy Systems at the University of Sheffield and the Director of EPSRC’s Centre for Doctoral Training in Energy Storage and its Applications. He is a Fellow of the Energy Institute and leads the University of Sheffield’s Strategic Partnership with Drax as well as the Energy Systems Research Pillar in the Sheffield Energy Institute. He has considerable expertise in analysis and design of clean energy processes and the study of energy systems, and has published over 100 papers in top international journals and peer reviewed conferences across energy technology and system levels.
He has also worked extensively with Industry partners to assess new clean energy generation and storage technologies, and their role and value within the wider market and system. Around this work he has received funding through BEIS, MOD, EPSRC, H2020, RAEng, NERC and the Faraday Institution.

Adam Butler, University of Cambridge
Adam is a Research Associate in the Department of Earth Sciences and the Centre for Environmental and Industrial Flows at the University of Cambridge. His work there focuses on the coupling of sub-surface fluid flows with pressure and ground deformation, and in particular its application to CO2 sequestration. In between first studying Mathematics at the University of Cambridge as an undergraduate and his current position, Adam completed an MSc in Applied Mathematics followed by a PhD and an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowship in the Department of Mathematics at Imperial College London, where he studied how boundary-layer instabilities on aircraft wings are first triggered.

Peter Clough, Cranfield University
Dr Peter Clough is a Senior Lecturer in Energy Engineering at Cranfield University where his research focuses on hydrogen production, CO2 capture, and cheminformatics. Dr Clough is a lead investigator on the HyPER project, a £7.9m project funded by BEIS to scale up a next generation Sorption Enhanced Steam Methane Reforming pilot plant. In addition, Dr Clough has managed and led a series of successfully delivered projects totalling more than £11m in value. Dr Clough’s research is centred around the theme of clean energy, specifically hydrogen production, carbon capture and storage, and catalytic/non-catalytic material development and testing. Within these fields, his research group investigates reaction kinetics and mechanisms, apply machine learning to design and optimise materials, and the integration of decarbonisation technologies.

David Danaci, Imperial College London
David is a research associate at The Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London. He is currently working on an EPSRC project, “Multiphysics and multiscale modelling for safe and feasible CO2 capture and storage”, looking at sorption-enhanced reaction processes for industrial decarbonisation. From 2019-2021 he was working on a UKCCSRC project investigating adsorbents/adsorption for post-combustion CO2 capture. He also works on process modelling, and techno-economic analysis of separation, and decarbonisation processes. David completed his PhD at The University of Melbourne, where he worked on a CO2CRC project, exploring adsorption-based high-pressure CO2 capture from natural gas.

Jon Gibbins, UKCCSRC Director and University of Sheffield
Jon has worked on energy engineering, fuel conversion and CCS for 45 years, initially in industry and then as a university academic, latterly leading national academic research initiatives. With over 80 papers and more than 100 articles and reports on CCS and related topics, he is a Chartered Engineer, a Member of the IMechE, a Fellow of the Institute of Energy and Professor of CCS at the University of Sheffield. Since 2005 Jon has played a leading role in UK CCS academic capacity building, growing the UK CCS Research Centre as an inclusive and open virtual national hub and helping to start now-mainstream UK initiatives on industrial decarbonisation (2012) and CCS clusters (2016). His research activities centre around engagement with industry and policymakers on practical aspects of CCS deployment, with an emphasis on policy and economic requirements plus detailed practical analysis of matching capture plant designs to market conditions, supported in particular by the facilities at the Translational Energy Research Centre in Sheffield.

Stuart Gilfillan, University of Edinburgh
Stuart Gilfillan is a Reader in Geochemistry in the School of GeoSciences, at the University of Edinburgh. He was educated in Earth Science at the University of Glasgow (BSc) and Geology at the University of Manchester (PhD), and has 16 years’ of post-PhD experience of innovative geochemical research in CO2 storage for CCS. This research has developed a means of fingerprinting carbon dioxide in order to track its movement and means of storage in subsurface reservoirs, as part of efforts to develop carbon capture and storage technologies. More recently, he has applied his expertise to the emerging GeoEnergy sector through novel monitoring of unconventional gas extraction, geothermal energy, CO2 contamination in, and connectivity of, hydrocarbon fields. He has a keen interest in all areas of utilising the subsurface for energy production or storage, and he is currently Deputy Programme Director for the GeoEnergy MSc course at Edinburgh, which he co-developed.

Mike Gorbounov, Brunel University London
Mike Gorbounov (MEng, AMIChemE) is a Doctoral Researcher at Brunel University London. Green Chemistry and Sustainable Engineering have always been of interest to him. Before joining the Department of Chemical Engineering at Brunel, he was developing a novel and environmentally-friendly propellent that could be used either in fireworks or space ships. Currently, he is working in Dr Salman Masoudi Soltani’s research group, investigating production methods and applications of carbonaceous adsorbents derived from biomass combustion ash in the context of post-combustion carbon capture. Mike has also worked as an RA on two UKCCSRC Flexible Funding Calls (2020 & 2021) as part of Dr Soltani’s research group, as well as for SeaCURE (a BEIS-funded project that is currently aiming to design, build, commission and operate a bespoke pilot-scale unit, that would capture CO2 from sea-water), where he is contributing to the design, modelling and optimisation of the amine-based capture system.

Stuart Haszeldine, UKCCSRC and University of Edinburgh
Professor Stuart Haszeldine is the UKCCSRC Deputy Director for Storage. He is a geologist and environmental scientist at the University of Edinburgh, with 45 years’ experience working with subsurface information from hydrocarbon extraction to waste disposal. From 2005 he has created the UK’s largest University group examining CO2 storage geology, with a particular focus on natural analogues, containment processes and subsurface pressures. His research focuses on energy and environment, linking between academia, business, government, and public engagement. He served as advisor to the 2005-6 UK Parliament Science and Technology Committee on CO2 capture and storage, and was the only academic on the seminal Oxburgh Report to BEIS of 2016. He currently serves as one of two academics on the CCUS Council, advising Secretary of State and Energy Ministers. His current work is developing the Carbon Take Back Obligation and carbon offsets, to align carbon storage tonnage with climate requirements, and also developing multi-seasonal hydrogen storage onshore and offshore UK. Stuart was awarded the Scottish Science Prize in 1999, elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2003, appointed OBE for services to climate change technologies in 2012, and in 2021 he was appointed Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Ruth Herbert, CCSA
Ruth joined the CCSA in October 2021, following a public sector career spanning almost two decades. In her previous role as Director of Strategy & Development at the Low Carbon Contracts Company, Ruth oversaw implementation of two key features of today’s electricity market – the CfD and Capacity Market – and the company’s development into a trusted advisor to government on decarbonisation.  At the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Ruth headed the Electricity Market Reform Programme Office, overseeing delivery of the White Paper and Energy Act 2013. In 2008-9, following her negotiation of the EU Directive on CO2 storage, Ruth led on international CCS policy and the London Ministerial Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum. She was a Financial Services Strategy adviser at HM Treasury and an economic adviser for the City of London Corporation.

Andrew Hood, Harbour Energy
Andrew is a Subsurface & Wells Development Manager at Harbour Energy and is currently working on the V Net Zero project, Energy Transition and CCS. With almost 15 years of experience, Andrew has extensive knowledge and expertise in the oil & gas sector and is a specialist in Well P&A.

 

 

Kranthi Jonnalagadda, Cranfield University
Dr Kranthi Jonnalagadda completed Bachelor and Master degrees in Chemical Engineering. For his Phd, he worked in the field of Cryogenics and Cryocoolers where he worked on the development of a boiloff reliquefication system for helium cryostats. He has been working as a Research Fellow at Cranfield University for the last four years. Currently he is working projects related to Carbon Capture, waste heat recovery, bioprocess engineering and desalination using concentrated solar power. He is an associate member of IChemE and HEA and is passionate about teaching.

Ben Kek, BP
Ben Kek is Deputy Project Director responsible for technical integration on the Net Zero Teesside (NZT) and Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) project (www.netzeroteesside.co.uk). Net Zero Teesside will enable Teesside’s ambition to be the first net zero industrial cluster in the UK through CCUS, anchored by a dispatchable gas with carbon capture power station to complement renewables in further decarbonizing the electricity grid. Northern Endurance Partnership will aim to develop the UK’s largest scale offshore CO2 transportation and storage system serving both Teesside and Humber clusters, enabling industrial decarbonisation of the largest emitters in the UK via CCUS. Ben has been a core member in the conception of this project since early 2019, and is a Chartered Engineer (CEng IET) and a Project Management Professional (PMP). Throughout his career with BP, he has experienced the full lifecycle of several large mega projects from drawing board to production operations in several countries. In particular, he spent over 5 years in the engineering of the Shah Deniz 2 project which was recognized with the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Major Project Award in 2019, an example of a complex mega project spanning the full gas value chain, with many analogues to the NZT/NEP full chain CCUS project. Ben is passionate about the role that the NZT/NEP  project will play in the UK and BP’s net zero ambitions by 2050, as part of the global energy transition.

Sam Krevor, Imperial College London
Sam Krevor is a Reader in Carbon Sequestration Studies in the Department of Earth Science & Engineering. He is the Principal Investigator for the subsurface CO2 Group at Imperial College London. Their work is focused on the migration and trapping of CO2 in the subsurface, and limitations from plume migration and pressurisation to the CO2  storage capacity.

 

Ed Lester, University of Nottingham
Professor Ed Lester (FRSC, FIMM, CChem) is Lady Trent Professor of Chemical Engineering and an active member of the Advanced Materials Research Group in the Faculty of Engineering at Nottingham. He has been working at the interface between chemistry and chemical engineering for the last 24 years and pioneered the use of the image analysis approach to continuous hydrothermal reactor modelling. His current RCUK funded projects include self-learning reactors, nanomaterials for low noise environments and green chemistry synthesis routes. Past projects include several industrially funded nanoparticle grants and from 2012-2016 coordination of an FP7 Large Scale Integrating Collaborative project called SHYMAN (€10M) that designed, built and commissioned a 1000 ton/yr plant for the synthesis of nanomaterials. He is currently President of the International Solvothermal and Hydrothermal Association (ISHA) and Academic member of the Fuel and Energy Research Forum.

Xin Liu, University of Nottingham
Xin is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nottingham. He received his PhD degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Nottingham in 2017. His current research interests include exploring stimuli‐responsive polymers and functionalised porous materials for energy-related applications, with special focus on designing advanced solid sorbents for post-combustion CO2 capture and direct air capture.

Bryony Livesey, UKRI
Bryony leads the Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge (IDC), which forms part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF). IDC is a £210m programme with £261m match funding from industry, designed to deploy low carbon technologies and enabling infrastructure in heavily industrialised regions of the UK. Bryony was previously Head of Technology at Costain, with responsibility for the identification and development of new technology. She was a member of BEIS’ CCUS Cost Challenge Task Force, a Director of the CCSA (where she co-chaired the Technical Working Group) and has previously chaired the Independent Advisory Panel for the UKCCSRC.

Mathieu Lucquiaud, University of Sheffield
Mathieu Lucquiaud is a Professor of Fuels and Combustion in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Sheffield where he provides the leadership to an internationally leading activity in Clean Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage. His research vision is both fundamental and ‘mission orientated’ and aims at developing the energy and climate technologies necessary to achieve a zero-carbon society, with a focus on zero carbon power, waste incineration and hydrogen, and carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere. Mathieu launched the first free online course on Climate Change and Carbon Capture and Storage aimed at the general public, with over 15,000 people from over 150 countries having taken part so far.

Kirsty Lynch, Storegga
Kirsty has over 12 years’ experience working internationally in the low carbon energy industry with deep expertise and enthusiasm for public engagement and education. Kirsty joined Pale Blue Dot Energy in 2018 after more than six years at the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, leading all international public and community engagement programmes and establishing the highly successful CO2degrees Education initiative, that was adapted and translated for use in more than nine countries. Kirsty also comes with nearly four years of project delivery experience, having managed the stakeholder and knowledge share activities of one of the early UK carbon capture and storage projects. In her life before low carbon energy, Kirsty held a variety of communication and event roles for elite sport and community health improvement initiatives.

Mercedes Maroto-Valer, IDRIC and Heriot-Watt University
Professor Mercedes Maroto-Valer (FRSE, FIChemE, FRSC, FRSA, FEI) is Champion and Director of the UK Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) focused on accelerating the transition to net zero of the UK industrial clusters and establishing the first world net-zero industrial cluster. Mercedes is Deputy Principal (Global Sustainability) and Director of the Research Centre for Carbon Solutions (RCCS) at Heriot-Watt University. Her internationally recognised track record covers energy systems, CCUS, integration of hydrogen technologies and low-carbon fuels. She has over 550 publications, holds leading positions in professional societies and editorial boards and has received numerous international prizes and awards.

Richard Marsh, UKCCSRC and Cardiff University
Richard Marsh specialises in resilient energy systems. Previously an engineer with QinetiQ, developing aviation gas turbine technologies, Richard joined Cardiff University on a range of energy related projects including low carbon technologies. In 2008 he took a lectureship in the Gas Turbine Research Centre, where he has led a variety of research projects and presented at major international conferences, including ASME, ICLASS and the Combustion Institute. Collaborators include Rolls-Royce, Siemens, Tata, EU and EASA. Funding sources include, EPSRC, EU H2020, ERDF and industry. Research projects include capture ready power plants, particulate matter emission, power plant flexibility and use of alternative fuels.

Alex Milward, BEIS
Alex Milward joined the Civil Service in 2021 after nearly thirty years working in the private sector specialising in leading large scale multi-year programmes within the energy sector focused on organisation transformation, operational improvement, commercial innovation and supply chain.   Alex’s experience spans working for large international Oil & Gas companies, as well as water, gas, and electricity utilities. Alex is co-leading the UK’s Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage Programme within BEIS.  This involves setting the policy, legislative, regulatory and funding frameworks to launch a new carbon capture UK industry in collaboration with the private sector to provide low carbon power to the electricity grid, decarbonised energy to heavy industries such as chemicals, cement, refining, as well as enable the production of blue hydrogen and introduction of engineered negative emissions such as BECCS and DACCS.

Eni Oko, Newcastle University
Dr Eni Oko is a Process and Energy Systems Engineer and Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering at Newcastle University, UK with over 15 years of industrial and academic experience. Dr Oko’s research spans the area of carbon capture and transport, green hydrogen production, energy storage and energy systems analysis and integration. Dr Oko worked on different EPSRC, NERC, EU H2020, UKCCSRC and INNOVATE UK funded research projects from 2011 to 2019. Dr Oko has published over 30 journal papers, one of which was awarded the SAGE Best Paper Prize 2014 and the Institute of Mechanical Engineering (IMechE) Ludwig Mond Prize 2014. This paper was also a major part of a 2020 UK Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) report titled ‘Carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) deployment at dispersed sites’. Dr Oko has received over £300k in research funding from different sources, namely EPSRC, EU H2020, Royal Society and GCRF, since August 2020 for ongoing/completed research projects (4 as PI and 2 as Co-I) with industrial and academic collaborators in UK, China, Norway, Belgium and South Africa.

Piera Patrizio, Imperial College London
Piera is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London and guest researcher at IIASA. Her work focuses on implementing analytic insights from energy modelling in fields of social science, climate policy and macroeconomics and vice versa, including the assessment of socio-economic impacts of energy systems decarbonisation and low-carbon technologies deployment. She is currently part of the UKRI funded CO2RE Hub, where she is integrating a range of CO2 removal pathways within the MONET-UK model. She has 5 years’ experience with energy systems and climate models, which she adopted at different geographic scales – urban to global level, and in a variety of case studies. Before joining Imperial College, Piera held a Research Scholar position at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA, Austria).

Ben Petrovic, Brunel University London
Ben Petrovic (BEng, AMIChemE) is a Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Brunel University London. During the final year of his Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate degree Ben worked to both model and optimise an amine-based capture unit removing CO2 from a natural gas fired CCGT. Since the start of his PhD in October 2019 Ben has been working as part of Dr Salman Masoudi Soltani’s research group on the development of adsorbents for post-combustion CO2 capture from biomass combustion residues. This work is currently focussed on the production of pelletised zeolitic adsorbents derived from biomass fly ash with testing conducted in a fixed-bed reactor (designed and built by Ben during his PhD research). Ben has also worked as an RA on two UKCCSRC Flexible Funding Calls (2020 & 2021) and a consultancy project with TP Group Ltd. as part of Dr Masoudi’s research group.

Richard Porter, University College London
Richard Porter is a Chartered Chemical Engineer and Senior Research Associate at UCL who works on a range of research topics for CCUS that include chemical kinetics, pollutant emissions, techno-economic modelling and risk analysis. He currently serves as the Scientific Manager for the Horizon 2020 project C4U ‘Advanced Carbon Capture for steel industries integrated in CCUS Clusters’. He obtained his PhD from the University of Leeds in 2007 and also has several years’ experience of developing detailed and reduced chemical kinetic mechanisms for combustion applications and their incorporation within CFD. He has published over 40 combustion, energy and CCS related research papers and has an H-index of 16.

Mohamed Pourkashanian, TERC and University of Sheffield
Mohamed Pourkashanian is the Head of the Energy Institute at the University of Sheffield, the Managing Director of the Translational Energy Research Centre (TERC), Sustainable Aviation Fuels Innovation Centre (SAF-IC) and the General Secretary of International Flame Research Foundation (IFRF). As a Professor of Energy Engineering, he has completed numerous major research projects on clean energy technology and has received substantial grants from partners such as BEIS, EU, NATO, industrial partners and UKRI-EPSRC. He is a member of several international and national scientific bodies e.g., member of the ISCF-Industrial Decarbonisation Advisory Group, and Chair of the International Test Centre Network (ITCN). He led the establishment of the PACT and TERC national facilities in 2012 and 2019. He has published more than 491 refereed research papers and co-authored four books. At the Translational Energy Research, Professor Pourkashanian provides expert academic, strategic and operational leadership to the centre.

Julia Race, University of Strathclyde
Prior to starting her academic career, Julia worked in industry for over 20 years, latterly in the pipeline industry for 7 years as an integrity consultant for GE Oil and Gas. In this role, she was responsible for providing fitness-for-purpose, remaining life and corrosion assessments for onshore and offshore pipelines. She has also worked as a materials engineer in the petrochemical and power generation industries involved with the operation, maintenance and design of chemical and power plant. Her primary research interest is in the use of pipeline infrastructure to deliver pathways to Net Zero – primarily in the transportation of CO2 for CCS schemes and hydrogen as a replacement for oil and gas in the energy mix. Research topics have included material and specification requirements for CO2 and H2 pipelines, techniques for conducting Quantitative Risk Assessments, including pipeline failure frequency and consequence analysis, hydraulic network design and developing system flexibility and techno-economics and wider economy impacts. Her wider research interests include the modelling of structural damage and corrosion on structures, particularly relating to onshore and offshore energy infrastructure.

David Reiner, UKCCSRC and University of Cambridge
David Reiner is Deputy Director for Systems and Policy of the UKCCSRC.  David is Associate Professor of Technology Policy at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge and Assistant Director of the Energy Policy Research Group (EPRG) at Cambridge. He is one of two academic members of the CCUS Council, which is chaired by the UK Energy Minister and is on the Advisory Board of the £180m Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge.

Matthew Rhodes, Camirus
Matthew Rhodes is Managing Director at Camirus. His career spans 20 years in the energy sector and before that 15 years in manufacturing and in management consultancy, working in a variety of sectors including food and chemicals for Unilever and the development of batteries for electric vehicles with RWE. For many years, he ran a specialist engineering and project development company supporting clients developing renewable energy and low carbon construction projects across the UK and internationally. Since 2012 he’s worked extensively with economic development bodies and local government in the UK, including as a board member of the Greater Solihull and Birmingham Local Enterprise Partnership and Chair of West Midlands’ Energy Capital.

Jen Roberts, UKCCSRC and University of Strathclyde
Dr Jen Roberts is a Senior Lecturer and Chancellor’s Fellow in Energy, Society and Policy at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Jen works in the interdisciplinary field of energy systems and technical, social and environmental risk – with particular focus on net zero subsurface resources including CO2 storage. A strong theme of her work is whole systems impacts and benefits for integrated and equitable decision making to inform a just transition to a sustainable future. A geoscientist by training, she still does research on rocks and fluid flow from time to time! An advocate for inclusion, Jen joins the UKCCSRC as Deputy Director and Early Career Lead this April, having been an active member since the very beginning.

Abby Samson, University of Sheffield
Dr Abby Samson is a lecturer in Fuels and Combustion for the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Prior to this, she was a Senior Lecturer in Engineering at the University of Lincoln. Abby is an experimentalist and has worked on coal and biomass conversion and utilisation for over 17 years.  Her research focuses on the development of low-carbon and sustainable energy and fuels including fundamental studies on gasification, combustion and pyrolysis of solid fuels, heterogenous catalysis, pollution control, carbon capture and materials recovery. Abby is a Member of the Committee for the Clean Energy Special Interest Group for the Institution of Chemical Engineers. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Leeds in biomass conversion, a MS in Chemical Engineering from West Virginia University in coal and carbon science and a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame.

Allison Schaap, National Oceanography Centre (NOC)
Allison Schaap is a research engineer and Associate Head of the Ocean Technology and Engineering Group at NOC. Her primary research interest is the engineering of new technology for environmental sensing, with a focus on microfluidic system design. She has contributed to the development of a number of NOC’s lab-on-chip sensors and deployed them around the world in support of a range of scientific research projects. She received her PhD from the Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands) for work on integrating optics and microfluidics to automatically identify algae species. Prior to that she completed a masters in Mechanical Engineering and a bachelors in Engineering Physics at the University of British Columbia (Canada).

Stuart Scott, University of Cambridge
Dr Scott’s research is focussed primarily on carbon capture and other processes for the abatement of CO2. This includes detailed investigations into specific technologies, with a large effort on processes which are based on gasification, combustion and thermochemical cycles, as well as more general process and reactor modelling and sustainability assessment. Recent work has looked at combined gasification and metal oxygen donor processes (often called chemical looping combustion), in which the oxygen for combustion comes from a solid oxygen carrier (usually a metal oxide) rather than air. These high temperature processes have the potential to dramatically reduce the energy penalty associated with carbon capture and storage (CCS), and can also be used to produce hydrogen. Dr Scott’s research in this area goes from the understanding and development of the materials, through to lab-scale testing and process modelling of the scaled up systems.

Minos Skountzos, University of Sheffield
Minos graduated with an MSc in Advanced Materials Science and Engineering from Imperial College London, after completing his MEng in Chemical Engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece). As a member of the Centre for Doctoral Training in the Advanced Characterisation of Materials (CDT-ACM), he studies for a PhD in corrosion science, under the supervision of Dr Kyra Sedransk Campbell and Prof Mary Ryan. His research, funded by bp-ICAM and undertaken at Imperial College London and the University of Sheffield, aims at improving our understanding of the behaviour of stainless steels and Ni-base alloys, in corrosive environments and specifically bromide containing solutions. Currently, he is working on CO2 corrosion inhibition in Post Combustion Carbon Capture, at the University of Sheffield, funded by the UKCCSRC.

Vincenzo Spallina, University of Manchester
Vincenzo Spallina is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemical Engineering at The University of Manchester. His research is devoted to the process intensification (chemical looping, membrane reactors) applied to sustainable routes for energy and chemical production by using experimental and modelling techniques. He obtained a PhD cum laude at the Politecnico of Milano in 2013. Prior to joining the University of Manchester as Lecturer in 2018, he was post-doctoral researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology and Tecnalia Research Centre, where he was involved in several national and international projects related to chemical looping technologies, membranes technologies. Since 2019, he has been involved in several research projects (with a credit share > £ 2m) including decarbonisation of steel industry EPSRC BREINSTORM (PI) and CLYCHING) and H2020 project C4U (Co-I) biofuel production and waste valorisation (leading a £4.5m H2020 project GLAMOUR) and EPSRC SPACING (Co-I) . He is currently supervising five post-doctoral research associates and five PhD students.

Goran Strbac, Imperial College London
Goran Strbac is a Professor of Energy Systems, with extensive experience in advanced modelling and analysis of operation, planning, security and economics of energy systems. He led the development of novel advanced analysis approaches and methodologies that have been extensively used to inform industry, governments and regulatory bodies about the role and value of emerging new technologies and systems in supporting cost effective evolution to smart low carbon energy future. He is currently Director of the joint Imperial-Tsinghua Research Centre on Intelligent Power and Energy Systems, Leading Author in IPCC WG 3, Member of OFGEM RIIO-2 Challenging Group, Member of the UK Smart System Forum, Member of the European Technology and Innovation Platform for Smart Networks for the Energy Transition, and Member of the Joint EU Programme in Energy Systems Integration of the European Energy Research Alliance. He co-authored 4 books and published over 200 technical papers.

Rachel Sutton, Progressive Energy
Rachel is a chartered chemical engineer with extensive experience in the chemicals manufacturing industry with ExxonMobil, during which time she held a wide range of technical and leadership roles. In addition to operational, reliability and project engineering expertise, Rachel also led complex organisational initiatives, with a focus on innovation, sustainability, organisational effectiveness and inclusion & diversity.
After taking a career break to explore the world’s wilderness, Rachel redirected her skillset and passion into tackling the climate challenge and joined Progressive Energy in 2020 as the Project Manager for HyNet North West. She now manages a consortium of partners in the development and delivery of this ground-breaking and complex decarbonisation project.

Tamara Topic, University of Southampton
Tamara Topic is a Research fellow in CO2 shipping and Future Ports at the Civil, Maritime and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Southampton. Her work includes research and modelling solutions for the shipping of CO2 from ports to geological storage. Additionally, she works on a design for zero-emission XL cruise ships. Dr Topic has completed her PhD research at Newcastle University, School of Engineering, Department of Marine, Subsea and Offshore Technology. Her doctoral research is in shipping decarbonisation and the reduction of emissions from ships. Dr Topic worked as a research assistant in the Centre for Energy and National Centre for Systems Integration at Newcastle University, and is interested in zero-emission shipping and zero-emission power systems, particularly green hydrogen. She holds a Master of Science degree in Naval Architect and Mechanical Engineer from the University of Zagreb.

James Watt, WSP
James Watt is a consultant with WSP specialising in Hydrogen, CCUS and decarbonisation. He was previously Process Engineering Manager and Technical Manager – CCS/Renewables for Wood plc in Darlington, UK. He has extensive experience in delivering projects from concept to commissioning in multiple sectors including conventional power, chemicals, CCS, hydrogen, renewables, gas storage and transmission and upstream oil and gas. Previous projects included the Longannet CCS transportation FEED, capture projects, concept design for OGCI CGP Teesside project and cluster/infrastructure studies (Yorkshire & Humber x2, Teesside x2 including the Teesside Collective Project, Scotland x2). His involvement in hydrogen projects includes NGN H21 Leeds Citygate, H100 and Hynet, most recently working SGN on their Hydrogen and CCS study for the Southampton cluster. He has represented his employers on the Energy Institute CCS and Hydrogen working groups, the Carbon Capture and Storage Association Technical and Policy & Regulation working groups. He has served on the advisory boards and participated in several academic led R&D projects and was the chairman of the Energy Industries Councils CCS forum.

Joanna Watt, EPSRC
Joanna is a Senior Portfolio Manager at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UKRI. She is responsible for Negative Emissions Technologies, including the Carbon Capture & Storage research portfolio. She was previously a portfolio manager in Civil Engineering at EPSRC and has an academic research background in Organic Chemistry.

 

Ben Wetenhall, UKCCSRC and Newcastle University
Ben Wetenhall works in the area of CO2 transportation with impurities. Ben was the Principal Investigator and is a Co-Investigator on the EPSRC projects FleCCSnet and S-Cape. He is the lead author of the IEAGHG report “Impact of CO2 impurity on CO2 compression, liquefaction and transportation” and was a researcher on the MATTRAN (EPSRC) and COOLTRANS (National Grid) projects. He has conducted consultancy work for National Grid Carbon including work on ductile fracture control for CO2 pipelines with impurities. Ben’s current research involves modelling wind and buoyancy driven CO2 ingress into a building following a release using computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

Chris Williams, Industry Wales
Dr Chris Williams is the nominated lead of the South Wales Industrial Cluster. Chris is a Fellow of the IMechE and the EMA. Chris has 30 years experience in the steel industry and was seconded from Tata Steel into Industry Wales during 2020 to continue his leadership role for the South Wales Industrial Cluster.

 

 

John Williams, BGS
John is a senior geologist within the CO2 storage research team at the British Geological Survey. His expertise includes storage site characterisation and estimation of storage capacity. He has published on a range of topics relevant to CO2 storage on the UKCS, including pressure-limitations to CO2 storage capacity, the nature of the contemporary in situ stress state, and fault reactivation potential. He is currently engaged in research into the subsurface structure, properties and geomechanical constraints to the storage capacity of the Bunter Sandstone saline aquifer formation of the Southern North Sea.

Yong Yan, University of Kent
Yong Yan is Professor of Electronic Instrumentation, Head of Instrumentation and Control Research Group, and Director of Innovation at the School of Engineering, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). He has been awarded more than 10 research prizes by learned societies and professional institutions in recognition of his outstanding contributions to pulverised fuel flow metering and burner flame imaging. He has published in excess of 500 research papers in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings with an h-index of 47 and over 8300 citations. His current research interests in CCS include mass flow measurement of CO2 (single-phase and two-phase), detection and localisation of CO2 leakage from transportation networks and storage sites, and advanced monitoring of oxyfuel combustion processes.

Spring Network Conference 2022 - Recordings

 Video recordings (via the live webinars) of our conference sessions will be added below (where we have permission to share them).

Presentation slides

 Presentations from our conference sessions can be found below (where we have permission to share them).

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Welcome from Mohamed Pourkashanian, University of Sheffield

Welcome to UKCCSRC Spring 2022 Conference

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Keynote speaker 1: Alex Milward, BEIS

Capturing Carbon and a Global Opportunity

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Joanna Watt, EPSRC

EPSRC landscape and opportunities for CCS

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Jen Roberts, UKCCSRC

The UK CCS Research Community Network+ April 2022 – September 2025

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Mercedes Maroto-Valer, IDRIC

IDRIC: The UK Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre

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Mathieu Lucquiaud, University of Sheffield

Lessons learned from the first ‘Massive Open Online Course’ on CCS

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Ruth Herbert, CCSA

CCUS Delivery Plan 2035

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David Danaci, Imperial College London

UKCCSRC Core Research Projects Capture Theme at ICL

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Mathieu Lucquiaud, University of Sheffield

Zero-carbon hydrogen production: Cost reductions with sequential combustion

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Stuart Scott, University of Cambridge

Carbon capture and follow on work

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Sam Krevor, Imperial College London

Subsurface CO 2 storage: Scaleup and modelling plume migration

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Stuart Gilfillan, University of Edinburgh

WP2 CO 2 Migration and Storage

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Adam Butler, University of Cambridge

Reduced Order Modelling of CO 2 Storage

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John Williams, BGS

Large scale CO 2 storage: Pressure propagation and storage test beds

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David Reiner, UKCCSRC

Energy Prices, Crises and Time Series: Some preliminary results from the 2022 UKCCSRC Public Survey

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Piera Patrizio, Imperial College London

Inefficient investments as a key to narrowing regional economic imbalances

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Goran Strbac, Imperial College London

Role and Value of Carbon Capture and Storage in Low Carbon Energy System

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Ed Lester, University of Nottingham

Pilot Scale Carbon Capture using Solid Sorbents

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Ben Petrovic, Brunel University London

Biomass Combustion Ash in CO 2 Capture

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Mikhail Gorbounov, Brunel University London

Techno economics of Biomass Combustion Products in the Synthesis of Effective Low cost Adsorbents for Carbon Capture

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Xin Liu, University of Nottingham

Scalable step change carbon materials achieving high CO 2 adsorption capacity and selectivity at practical flue gas temperatures for potential breakthrough cost

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Vincenzo Spallina, Manchester University

CLYCHING: CLean hYdrogen and CHemicals production via chemical loopING

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Kranthi Jonnalagadda, Cranfield University

Recovering liquefaction cost of captured carbon dioxide

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Julia Race, Strathclyde University

The Role of CCUS in Industry Clusters in Delivering Value to the Political Economy

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Peter Clough, Cranfield University

Fugitive amine scrubbing using electrostatic precipitation

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Stuart Gilfillan, University of Edinburgh

Determining the geochemical baseline for CO2 monitoring at Carbon Management
Canada’s Field Research Station

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Yong Yan, University of Kent

Monitoring of CO2 Flow under CCS Conditions

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Eni Oko, Newcastle University

Catalyst aided solvent regeneration in Post combustion Carbon Capture Process

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Minos Skountzos, University of Sheffield

Use of copper carbonate as corrosion inhibitor in post combustion carbon capture

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Richard Porter, University College London

Optimising methanol production from steel manufacture off gases

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Ben Kek, East Coast cluster

UKCCSRC: Capacity development within clusters CO2 transport and storage plans

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Kirsty Lynch, Scotland cluster

Capacity development within cluster CO 2 T&S plans: Acorn in the Scottish Cluster

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Matthew Rhodes, Black Country cluster

Carbon transport and storage issues and plans

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Tamara Topic, Solent cluster

IDRIC - CO 2 from Port to Pipeline (CO 2 P2P)

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Rachel Sutton, North West cluster

HyNet North West

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Chris Williams, South Wales cluster

“Capacity development within clusters - CO2 transport and storage plans”

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Andrew Hood, Harbour Energy

Capacity Development within Clusters: Harbour Energy V Net Zero

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Keynote speaker 2: Bryony Livesey, UKRI

A view from the UK’s Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge

Poster Gallery

Posters from the poster reception on 20th April 2022 can be found below (where we have permission to share them). Click on the tile to see an enlarged version of each poster.