The School of Engineering is to share in a £2 million project linked to clean power and heat generation.

The School is partnering with a company called Sunamp who are specialists in a high-power energy storage technology. Together, they led a successful funding bid with partners in China to boost the performance of Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) power plants.

The ORC power plants use clean, although intermittent, renewable heat sources for distributed heat and power supply in China.

By integrating Sunamp’s heat storage technologies with the ORC it is possible to produce a more dependable distributed heat and power supply using a wide range of renewable heat sources, such as solar energy.

ORC is believed to be among the most promising technologies to use sources of renewable heat and cut pollution generated by fossil fuels, and it perfectly fits the needs of a country like China, still mainly relying on coal for its heat and power needs, but with big plans to increase penetration of renewables.

Rankine Cycle

The £2 million funding will come from the China-UK Research and Innovation Bridges programme, a joint UK China initiative under the Newton Fund developing solutions for agri-food, energy, healthcare, and urbanisation.

The Chinese project lead is Beijing University of Technology (BJUT) along with business partner China Investment Yixing Red Sun Solar Energy Technology Company (CIYR), a medium sized SME focusing on solar thermal power generation technologies.

The University of Glasgow's academic leader is Dr Zhibin Yu from the School of Engineering. He said: “We’re pleased to be working on this exciting project with Sunamp, Beijing University of Technology and China Investment Yixing Red Sun Solar Energy Technology Company.

“The Rankine Cycle is named after the University of Glasgow pioneer Professor William Rankine FRS (1820-1872), so it’s particularly fitting that the University of Glasgow is contributing to this project. Building upon on-going research on ORC power generation technologies at the School, this exciting project will facilitate knowledge transfer, delivering real impacts to the world.”

First published: 4 May 2017

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