Heralding a major step towards Net Zero for energy intensive industries
An international blueprint for the decarbonisation of energy-intensive industries is taking shape, after Lucideon successfully completed the first 100% hydrogen firing at a multi-million-pound open-access centre, which supports research and development in the advanced ceramics industry
Lucideon worked with Creavit Türkiye on the alternative energy project to successfully fire sanitaryware solely by hydrogen, over 13 hours at 1200°C, at the £10 million AMRICC Centre, based in Staffordshire.
Firing using 100% hydrogen represents a significant first in the innovation stakes for The AMRICC Centre, which operates under an open-access format, ensuring materials, processes, and technologies can be developed at a commercially relevant scale and shared across industrial and academic fields.
The facilities have enabled Lucideon to pave the way for energy-intensive industries, such as bricks, roof tiles, tableware, and sanitary ware, to utilise hydrogen in their energy strategies, while the firing of ceramic cores in the kiln could help the decarbonisation of aeroengine component manufacture.
In keeping with the innovative nature of the project, the hardware used in the process was also partially funded by the Innovate UK EconoMISER programme, awarded to the Foundation Industries Sustainability Consortium (FISC), of which Lucideon is one of five partners.
Mark Dudson, Chief Operating Officer, Advanced Materials at Lucideon, oversaw the project.
He said: "After leading the way on blended natural gas and hydrogen in 2022 and an intensive project to redesign the kiln and fuel supply system, Lucideon and The AMRICC Centre marked another major milestone in the mission to support the international ceramics industry on the journey to Net Zero.
"The team is now gearing up to start delivering client project work and it is great to see the strong international interest in the use of hydrogen as part of the ceramic industry’s decarbonisation journey."
Lucideon joined forces with gas specialists BUSE Group, along with Cryoserve Engineering Services, Therser UK ltd, and 6 Engineering Ltd, to achieve the successful outcome.
The AMRICC Centre is the physical outcome from the Midlands Industrial Ceramics Group's (MICG) £18.27 million four-year research programme, funded by Government under UK Research and Innovation's flagship Strength in Places Fund in 2021.
Alongside an equipment suite featuring over 350 pieces of high-value technology, The AMRICC Centre collectively offers unique capabilities for users - coupled with the expertise of scientists, engineers, data scientists, and computational modellers to turn innovative ideas into market-ready technologies.
An important part of The AMRICC Centre's remit is to partner with universities to provide an educational facility to train and support material scientists for the future, developing pipelines of talent from degree apprentices, through to post-doctoral graduates, to create new, educated, ambitious talent for the UK ceramics industry.
» Discover more about our hydrogen fired kilns
About The AMRICC Centre
The AMRICC Centre is the UK's only advanced ceramics pilot-scale facility, providing the ability to rapidly solve materials development and production challenges, and thus accelerate products to market. Its critical mass, its breadth and depth of ceramic processing equipment, and its technologies, allow it to provide a unique resource for industry. It is hosted and managed by Lucideon on behalf of the MICG consortium, in close collaboration with industry & academia, and was jointly funded by the UKRI Strength in Places Fund (SIPF) and Lucideon to deliver the benefits of the Midlands Advanced Ceramics for industry 4.0 project in an open-access facility for all.
The AMRICC Centre serves as a Centre of Excellence for the development of advanced ceramic technologies. It combines capabilities from powder processing, forming, sintering, and testing, all the way through the manufacturing process - notably all in one place.
The cutting-edge equipment suite provides capabilities that are rarely available elsewhere, and covers a range of extreme conditions, from densification with hot or cold isostatic pressure, to sintering up to 3000 degrees, sintering in a vacuum, or in atmospheres such as argon.
The Centre covers conventional and non-conventional manufacturing methods, such as additive manufacturing, and also both conventional and novel sintering techniques, with all of this supported by a suite of testing and analytics capability, all at greater-than-lab scale.
The Centre allows users to change or develop a new manufacturing process with industrially relevant facilities outside of your current production line. By using the extensive capacity and capability within The AMRICC Centre, products can be developed offline, isolating all the independent variables in parallel to existing operations. There’s no loss of current production, reducing the risk and cost of the process, whilst allowing time and expertise to investigate all aspects of a new production process.
The AMRICC Centre offers more than just equipment. Threaded through its development work is expertise in computational modelling and data science, along with digital twinning, computational materials development, and other future-facing Industry 4.0 practices.
Access to The AMRICC Centre and its entire range of cutting-edge kit capabilities is open to all on a pay-as-you-go basis, but for those interested in more frequent collaboration, membership is available and offers additional benefits. Regardless of model, users can either use the open access facilities privately, or add in the superb skills, abilities, and many years of experience of Lucideon's technical experts who then provide the expertise and the consultancy to find solutions to their root-cause problems.
About the Foundation Industries Sustainability Consortium (FISC)
FISC was formed in 2020 after UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) committed £66m to help the foundation industries take important steps towards a more sustainable, productive, and secure future.
It will lead projects exploring and delivering effective decarbonisation solutions to the problems they face across six key themes: Alternative Fuels, Circular Economy, Digital Sensing, Process Optimisation, Sustainable Materials, Training and Skills.
The five partners are Lucideon, CPI, Glass Futures, Henry Royce Institute, and Materials Processing Institute.
November 2024
Video clip
Click on the image below for our 100% hydrogen firing video clip
