Swansea University’s Energy Security Research Institute (ESRI) develops and demonstrates new energy technologies at an industrially relevant scale. Rated BREEAM Outstanding for environmental suitability, its 3,800 sqm building houses multidisciplinary research teams who are responsible for delivering cutting edge research across a range of different energy areas.
ESRI has been supported by Research England’s UK Research Partnership Investment Fund, Innovate UK and the Welsh government, as well as a wide spectrum of energy businesses including BP. Its building cost £28 million, half of it from English and Welsh funding for higher education. Since then it has brought in another £29 million over five years from UK and European research funders as well as industry.
ESRI is working on solutions to several of the biggest problems facing future energy supply. One is the transmission of energy, especially electricity. The shift to renewable energy means that electricity will increasingly be generated in new places, some remote. This calls for more research to improve the efficiency of electricity transmission systems.
A further priority is to reduce industrial rather than domestic carbon dioxide emissions through technologies such as carbon capture and storage. ESRI is supporting research into organometallic compounds to capture industrial emissions of carbon dioxide in bulk. Research in this area has a promising focus on old shale oil wells as carbon dioxide reservoirs as shale can absorb three molecules of carbon dioxide for every molecule of gas extracted from it.
ESRI researchers have developed a bioreactor that can turn carbon dioxide into high-value chemicals or lower-value animal feed with the addition of water and using electricity from the wind, further supporting their focus into reducing impacts to the environment. This technology could be scaled up to use millions of tonnes of the greenhouse gas. They are also developing catalysts that can speed reactions to turn carbon dioxide into premium products such as ethylene and ethylene oxide, key inputs for the chemical industry. It may also become a feedstock for the production of octanol, a possible replacement for diesel fuel.