165 YEARS OF TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION

JUNE 2021

Building the
hydrogen home
How the most abundant element in the universe
could be used to decarbonise domestic heating

20 28 32 TheEngineerUK
theengineeruk
The Engineer UK

aerospace: Bristol aviation pioneer interview: Britishvolt CTO Allan late great engineers: Eugene
vertical aerospace hopes to usher paterson on building britain’s cernan - the last person to leave
in a new era of low carbon flight first battery gigaplant footprints on the moon
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CONTENTS 165
YEARS OF
TECHNOLOGY
& INNOVATION
VOLUME 302 • ISSUE 7928 • JUNE 2021

12
28

18 42
24
34
20
4 Editor’s Comment 10 news analysis 24 Robotics 36 Panel session report
Decarbonising domestic heating might Why the automotive rebound has been Industrial robot finds application in Special report on a panel discussion
prove to the be the trickiest component stymied by a shortage of chips game-changing farming technology about the challenges and benefits of
of the UK’s quest for net zero digital twinning
12 Cover story 28 Interview
6 NEWS How hydrogen could be used to Britishvolt CTO Allan Paterson on 40 sci-fi eye
Williams and Italdesign join forces in decarbonise domestic heating in the UK building the UK’s first battery gigaplant Gareth Powell considers the future of
premium vehicle electrification push powered flight on other planets
16 viewpoint 30 energy
7 NEWS New inverter technology promises leap How an obsolete technology from the 42 late great engineers
UK engineers develop AI model for in electric vehicle performance 1950s is making a power grid comeback The life and times of Eugene Cernan -
predicting COVID patients’ ICU pathway the last man on the moon
18 Talking Point 32 Events Planner
8 news What might the UK’s accelerated Key industry events over the next year 44 from the archive
Lotus backs all-electric future emissions targets mean for industry? June 1959 - advances in car ferries
34 manufacturing
9 news 20 aerospace AMRC engineers help UK watch 48 Blog
Semiconductor shortage halts How Bristol’s Vertical Aerospace hopes manufacturer gear up for production STEM and the digital divide
production at JLR plants to revolutionise urban mobility
COVER Image: Calvin McKenzie

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3 June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk

 EDITOR’S
NOVEMBERCOMMENT
2019

JON EXCELL

5
READ MORE
ONLINE
Low carbon battle
Digital twins, hydrogen
trains and the
semiconductor shortage
comes home
F
or many, the realities of the battle against the climate crisis remain an abstract,
arms-length issue.
www.theengineer.co.uk It makes little practical difference to the average consumer whether the
follow us at
electricity used to keep the lights on is generated by offshore renewables or coal-
@TheEngineerUK fired power plants.
But recent tabloid talk of a “boiler ban” has brought the implications of the UK’s
THINGS
theengineeruk
The Engineer UK
net zero push firmly into the nation’s living rooms, and perhaps also caused heating WE’VE
The Engineer UK
engineers and plumbers a few sleepless nights.
The outcry was prompted by the International Energy Agency’s recent warning LEARNT
that conventional gas boilers should be banned from sale by 2025, a call backed by the
UK business lobby group CBI. The UK government is making green issues a priority
THIS
ENGINEER JOBS
Find your next engineering job
as Glasgow gears up to host the COP26 climate summit later this year, and is widely
expected to back the proposal in its upcoming heat and buildings strategy.
ISSUE
online at The EngineerJobs
At 170m long,
It is of course possible that Boris Johnson’s famed populist tendencies
could prompt a watering down of these ambitions. But that would be a mistake.
1 HS2 tunnel
boring machine
Decarbonisation of heating - which accounts for as much as 17 per cent of UK carbon
Florence is the largest
emissions - will be absolutely key to delivering on the country’s accelerated net zero tunneling machine to
ambitions. be used on a UK rail
There’s no single silver bullet when it comes to low carbon heating, and meeting project
targets will rely on a range of solutions from improved insulation to heat pumps
Existing gas
and – as previously reported by The Engineer – even geothermal energy drawn from
abandoned coal mines.
2 appliances can
run on a natural gas
But in this issue’s cover story (page 12) we turn our attention to a gas that many
blend with 20 per
MISSION believe will play a starring role in this transition: hydrogen.
In a short space of time, hydrogen has moved from the fringes to the centre
cent hydrogen

STATEMENT ground of our national energy debate, and in this issue’s report we take a look at some As much as 90
The aim of of the practical engineering challenges and breakthroughs that could see it being 3 per cent of
used to heat our homes and offices by the end of the decade. herbicide used by
The Engineer farmers is wasted
Despite the progress demonstrated by those featured in our report, there are
is to champion
clearly many hurdles still to overcome, not least the challenge of rapidly scaling up
and promote The UK’s first
engineering
the production of green hydrogen (the subject of an earlier feature which can be read 4 battery
on our website.) But whether or not the hydrogen transition happens – and you’d gigafactory will
innovation and be brave to bet against it – the rapid progress being made by engineers working in produce 30GWh of
technology the field is another compelling illustration of the degree to which net zero is driving batteries per yer
development engineering innovation as never before.

Jon Excell
NASA astronaut
across all of 5 Gene Cernan
the UK’s key was the last of only 12
people to leave their
engineering footprints on the
sectors. moon
EDITOR • JON.EXCELL@MARK ALLENGROUP.COM

June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk 4

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NEWS
WAE and Italdesign
partner for EV solution
Partnership aims to electrify the upper-premium automotive market
MELISSA BRADSHAW reports
W
illiams Advanced
Engineering (WAE)
and Italdesign are
partnering to bring a high-
performance EV solution
to the upper-premium automotive
market.
Bringing ten years of
electrification work, with specialist
knowledge of high-performance
lightweight batteries and
experience as battery supplier to
the Formula E, ETCR and Extreme-E
racing series’, Oxfordshire-
based WAE is providing the
foundation for the partnership with
its new rolling chassis.
Having built on a previous
iteration of its EVX platform, the
latest version promises to deliver
‘class-leading weight and chassis
stiffness’ which, when combined
with Italdesign’s turnkey vehicle
development capabilities, aims to
support rapid industrialisation of a
new generation of premium electric
Sports GTs, crossovers and sedans.  CEO of Italdesign, at a virtual press
A key differentiator of the
EVX is its composite compression
moulded structural battery, which
will add significant rigidity to the
platform and provide extra support
with crash loads, allowing for
increased flexibility and design
freedom.
Performance figures revealed
include the ability to deliver
1000kW of power with 104kWh-
120kWh of energy, with potential
expansion of the battery pack to up
to 160kWh for a potential 1000km
vehicle range between charges.
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
JUNE 2021
Italdesign will build on the
WAE rolling chassis, providing full
vehicle architecture with additional
safety systems, structures and
devices according to customer
requirements.  Combining recycled composite
“When customers are coming to
us, especially in this case with the
competency of our colleagues from
WAE, we together can guarantee
specific performance — from the
driving but also from passive safety
measures,” said Jörg Astalosch,
event. “These are characteristics
that we can give to the car
depending on what the customer is
looking for and in which time they
want to reach their target to be on
the market.”
The partnership will enable
reduced time to market and
affordability at low-to-medium
volumes, the two companies said,
with production capabilities of up
to 10,000 units per annum, 500 of
which can be manufactured by
Italdesign at its facilities in Turin,
Italy.
6
Read more online
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of prototype E-Transit
CIVIL & STRUCTURAL
• All Lane Running motorway
radar tech accelerated
ELECTRONICS
G-Putty inks tailored for flexible
strain sensors
• Single transmitter programmes
and powers implants
MATERIALS
• Stabiliser residue inhibits
conductivity in 3D-printed
electronics
MEDICAL & HEALTHCARE
• Voltaglue device developed to
seal blood vessels
SKILLS & CAREERS
• An education blueprint for
Boasting a lightweight future industrial talent
structure, and various options for
customisation, the EVX will allow
customers to choose rear-wheel
and four-wheel drive layouts.
materials with aluminium, the
EVX can be broken down and
recycled at end of life, with ease
Jobs online
of disassembly a key design focus,
WAE confirmed. LOOKING FOR A
“The approach we’ve taken
is the platform can be flexible, so
NEW ROLE?
if required, and an organisation Visit jobs.theengineer.
wanted to utilise existing motor co.uk to search hundreds
transmission systems from of vacancies with leading
their own line-up, they would be employers from across
able to introduce those onto the
platform,” said Dyrr Ardash, head of
industry
automotive business development
at WAE. “We can tune things for
the brand characteristics of each
and every customer — from a
performance perspective, there’s a
degree of flexibility that will suit the
majority of customers .”
Read more at
www.theengineer.co.uk

Machine learning
lessons predict
path for ICU
COVID patients
Data gathered in trial could be applied to future waves
MELISSA BRADSHAW reports
A
team led by Imperial College
London has developed
an AI model to predict
the trajectory of Covid-19
patients in intensive care
units (ICUs).
The machine learning approach
makes predictions about how
conditions might progress, and
whether patients respond positively
to ‘proning’, the process of turning a
patient onto their front to improve
lung oxygenation. When ineffective,
it can delay the start of sequential
treatments such as extracorporeal
membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a
life-support machine that supports
the heart and lungs.
Researchers said that by using
AI to analyse patients’ data daily,
guidelines in clinical practice could
be improved and applied to future
waves of the pandemic as well as
treatment of similar diseases.
Dr Brijesh Patel, clinical science
FLAT-PACKABLE THERMAL COLLECTOR SET FOR RWANDA
MELISSA BRADSHAW reports
Dundee-based start-up SolarisKit has
developed a thermal collector flat pack
kit that promises to provide cheaper
access to hot water in Rwanda.
The company was founded by
mechanical engineer Dr Faisal Ghani in
2019, aiming to provide an affordable,
sustainable and practical solution for
heating water after reading a journal on
Rwanda’s energy usage.
Recently, SolarisKit completed
the Royal Bank of Scotland’s three-
month Climate Entrepreneur Accelerator
programme. RBS has established a
corporate partnership with SolarisKit as
TECHNOLOGY NEWS
lead at Imperial’s Department
of Surgery & Cancer and senior
intensivist at Royal Brompton
Hospital said ECMO has associated
risks and is the last resort for many
patients, after all other less invasive
interventions have failed.
“Patients appropriately placed
early onto ECMO show better
outcomes. However, only four per
cent of referred patients received
ECMO, which is due to a number
of reasons, but one of which could
have been delays in assessment of
responsiveness to interventions
like prone position.”
Published in Intensive
Care Medicine, the study used
retrospective data from 633
mechanically ventilated Covid-19
patients across 20 UK ICUs during
the first outbreak in 2020. Findings
showed that the AI model identified
factors that determined which
patients’ conditions were likely to
its first UK customer, with plans to install
the thermal collector at its Gogarburn HQ
in Edinburgh.
The ‘S200’ thermal collector
developed by SolarisKit is one of the
world’s easiest and cheapest to install
according to the team, with product
trials set to begin in June and 80 units
already shipped to Rwanda.
According to Dr Ghani, it operates
using the same principles of currently
available solar thermal collectors: solar
radiation is attenuated through high
transmission solar glass side panels.  Currently, the team has capacity to
“The radiation strikes an internally
7 June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
NEWS IN BRIEF
worsen and not respond to proning.
Derek Hill, professor of Medical
Imaging Science at UCL, said a
‘particularly striking’ finding
of Imperial’s study was that
mortality was higher at the peak
of the pandemic, potentially due
to workplace pressure resulting in
poor implementation of treatment
guidance.
“It is important to realise
that the authors have not shown
that their algorithm can be used
to improve patient outcomes in
subsequent waves of Covid, nor
that AI can help doctors manage
heavy workloads in the peak of
a pandemic,” he commented.
“In practice, changes in the way
patients present and are treated
since the start of the Covid
pandemic means any algorithms
that learn from the first wave will
only have limited value in helping
manage later Covid surges.”
suspended absorber coil which results in
the absorber wall temperature rising, up
to 70 degrees in direct sunlight,” Ghani
said. “Water is circulated through the
collector, via a small pump, to transfer
thermal energy from the absorber wall to
the fluid via forced convection.”
The solar collector’s prismatic
geometry allows passive tracking of the
solar radiation, suppression of heat loss
from the absorber and the ability to be
self-assembled on site. thus reducing
manufacturing and transportation costs.
produce 20,000 kits per year.
TANKED UP
Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land
(RBSL) has been awarded
£800m to upgrade 148 British
Army Challenger 3 Main Battle
Tanks. The upgraded armoured
vehicle will be equipped with a
120mm High Pressure L55A1 main
gun featuring programmable
multipurpose ammunition,
increased first-hit capability and
fire support technology. The
programme will create and sustain
450 jobs within the UK supply
chain and a further 200 jobs
within RBSL.
BORING CHILTERNS
HS2 Ltd has launched Florence,
the first of 10 tunnel boring
machines that will dig 64 miles
of tunnels between London and
the West Midlands. The 170m long
TBM will dig the first of a pair of
10-mile long tunnels under the
Chiltern hills. A second machine -
‘Cecilia’ - launches in June 2021 to
excavate the second tunnel at the
South Portal site in Hertfordshire.
ELECTRIC FLIGHT
Bye Aerospace has announced
the development of the eFlyer
800, an eight-seat all-electric
twin turboprop. The Denver-
based aircraft manufacturer said
performance estimates for the
airplane include up to 320 knot
cruise speed, 35,000ft ceiling and
500NM range with 45-minute IFR
reserves at normal cruise speed
of 280 knots. The aircraft will have
one fifth of the operating costs of
traditional twin turboprops.
Read more at
www.theengineer.co.uk

Lotus announces all-electric future
One more ICE is set to launch but future prosperity is with all-electric vehicles
JASON FORD reports
L
otus has announced its
intention to be a fully electric
vehicle company by the late
2020s.
The announcement
from the Hethel-based sports car
manufacturer forms part of a wider
initiative to transform the business,
brand, and results by 2028. In a
statement the company said it is
already ‘sparking a new generation
of Lotus cars, which will lead to an
increase in vehicle sales worldwide.’
“We’ve done some things very,
very well over the years but we
haven’t been able to turn that into
a sustainable business,” said Matt
Windle, MD, Lotus Cars during a
global virtual conference. “What we
need to do is find a blend of what
we know we do well. That will lead
to broader appeal amongst a global
FUNDING BOOST FOR WASTEWATER RECOVERY
Jason Ford reports
LAT Water, a Berkshire-based
developer of sustainable wastewater
treatment solutions, has raised £4.7m
in a funding round led by IW Capital.
Company CEO Mark Hardiman
said the funding will push LAT Water
forward towards its targets of providing
innovative, sustainable, low-cost
solutions for wastewater treatment.
The LAT technology
m Pixabay’
‘Image by Jemzo fro
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
TECHNOLOGY NEWS
audience that will lead to more
volume and profit which in turn
leads to more commercial success.”
The company – which
introduced iconic models including
the Elise, Elan and Evora - will
produce one more ICE vehicle
before switching to electric
process separates and recovers clean
water from contaminated industrial
water using waste heat. The system is
claimed to be highly scalable and can
be installed for treating flows from one
to over 1,000 cubic metres per day of
effluent.
The process is capable of treating
wastewater for a range of applications,
8
powertrains.
Codenamed Type 131, the
Emira is set to be unveiled at Lotus
Advanced Performance Centre in
Hethel on July 6 before making its
way to the Goodwood Festival of
Speed for its public dynamic debut.
Emira will be built on one of
including wastewater from landfill sites.
In this scenario, the process helps
with the odour associated with these
sites as well as reducing the need to
transport waste off-site for treatment.
The company’s first installation at
the Daxin landfill, in Shenyang, China,
has been successfully operating for
over two years. It was followed by the
construction of a showcase facility at
a Viridor site in England.
The 21-month pilot project at
Viridor’s Broadpath Landfill site in
Devon uses low-grade heat from
Viridor’s landfill gas engines at
ambient pressure to concentrate
leachate and extract water.
Backed by a £548,000 government
grant, the project aims to achieve
environmental benefits in retaining
the water resource while reducing
CO2 emissions by a potential 80
per cent reduction in tankering
requirements.
four new architectures – sports car,
hypercar, premium and e-sports
- announced by the company to
underpin the next generation of
Lotus performance cars. These
architectures will be available to
OEMs via Lotus Engineering.
As part of the company’s
transformation the company
is introducing a new technical
roadmap dubbed EAS-IP that is
expected to guide the work of
consultancy.
“The technology roadmap
we have in place is defined by
legislation but its’ also about
customer demands and the
challenge is always how quickly
can we get new technology onto
new vehicles,” said Windle.
“Lotus in the future is going
to be looking at intelligent
technology so we want the cars
to understand the owners, be it
through AI or machine learning.
The opportunities there are great,
but we’ll be developing them. With
every new model you’ll see new
levels of technology in the cars.”
BACK ON TRACK
A fleet of trains withdrawn from
service due to safety concerns are
being brought back into service.
Cracks on the lifting points
under the carriage of some
Class-800 Hitachi trains led to most
of GWR’s fleet and a significant
number of LNER and TransPennine
Express trains to be withdrawn in
May, 2021.
The gradual reinstatement of
services follows the establishment
of a service recovery plan agreed
between Hitachi Rail, regulators and
train operators.
“This episode highlights the
need for high safety standards
across the rail industry and that
companies should never be allowed
to compromise those standards, or
to reduce staff or resources, in the
pursuit of cost cutting,” said Mick
Lynch, RMT general secretary. JF
Read more at
www.theengineer.co.uk
 TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Semiconductor shortage halts of $50bn to fund semiconductor

production at JLR plants

manufacturing and research
provisions in the CHIPS for
America Act, which aims to
encourage domestic semiconductor
Jason Ford reports manufacturing and investment into
chip research.

A
global shortage of
semiconductors has led
to a temporary halt in
production at Jaguar Land
Rover’s Castle Bromwich and
Halewood.
The shortage has been
attributed to a significant increase
in demand for semiconductors
during the pandemic which has
seen increased sales of consumer
technology. The production of
electric vehicles is also said to have
put pressure on demand (News
Analysis, p.10).
JLR produces the XF, XJ,
F-TYPE, F-PACE and Jaguar XE
at Castle Bromwich in the West
Midlands. Halewood in Merseyside
produces the Range Rover Evoque
and Land Rover Discovery Sport. A
similar situation occurred at BMW’s
Mini plant in Cowley, which closed
for three days in April.
“We have adjusted production
schedules for certain vehicles
which means that our Castle
Bromwich and Halewood
manufacturing plants will be
operating a limited period of
non-production from Monday
26th April,” the company said. “We
are working closely with affected
suppliers to resolve the issues and
minimise the impact on customer
orders wherever possible.”
World Semiconductor Trade
Statistics show that the global
semiconductor market was up 6.8
per cent in 2020 and is expected to
show double-digit growth of 10.9 per
cent in 2021, which represents sales
of $488bn.
US reaction to the situation
has seen President Joe Biden
propose – under the auspices of an
Infrastructure Plan - the release
Commenting on developments
at JLR, Dominic Tribe, director
and automotive sector specialist
at management consultancy,
Vendigital, said: “JLR is no means
the only car manufacturer to be
affected by the global shortage of
semiconductors. Most other major
car manufacturers have already
announced production slowdowns.
“For the major car
manufacturers, the situation
is incredibly challenging and
competition for supplies is
intense. Normally, if a component
is at risk of short supply, this is
communicated upwards through
the supply chain, so the OEM
can plan ahead to meet capacity
demands. However, in this case, car
manufacturers are competing with
strong demand from OEMs in other
industry sectors.”

BATH EXPLORES VIRTUAL REALITY TO HELP OLDER PEOPLE DRILLING FOR

Melissa Bradshaw reports
A research team from Bath University is exploring
the use of Virtual Reality (VR) to improve balance and
prevent falls in older people.
Humans are able to keep balance using vision,
feedback from muscles and joints (procioceptive) and
from semi-circular canals in the ear (vestibular).
Traditionally, physical tests, such as on treadmills,
are used to assess balance, but these can be inaccurate
and unsafe, researchers said.
The team at Bath’s CAMERA motion capture
research centre wanted to investigate VR as a solution.
Bath University’s Dr Pooya Soltani worked alongside
Renato Andrade, from Clínica do Dragão, Espregueira-
Mendes Sports Centre, FIFA Medical Centre of
Excellence in Portugal.  energy that will heat council-owned
They reviewed data from 19 studies to investigate
the validity, reliability, safety, feasibility and efficacy of
using head-mounted display systems for assessing and
training balance in older adults, with results published
in the journal Frontiers in Sports and Active Living.
“Our pipeline included photogrammetry for
realistic avatars, motion capture for driving the avatar
and updating the visual scene inside the headset, and
the game engine for adding extra elements to the VR
scene,” said Dr Soltani.
Soltani explained that VR can be used to create
realistic scenarios such as crossing a street, or like a
video game where patients navigate through a maze
whilst performing cognitive tasks. The researchers
also discovered that the complexity of the system
could hinder balance, particularly in vestibular
patients.
Whilst the technology has ‘great potential’, he
added, further work is required before it can be used
widely in rehabilitation.
GEOTHERMAL HEAT
An abandoned coalmine is being
repurposed as a source of geothermal
buildings in South Tyneside.
Planning permission has been
granted for initial testing to take place
on the Hebburn minewater scheme,
which will draw geothermal energy
from abandoned flooded mines in the
former Hebburn Colliery to heat buildings
including a residential tower block.
Two wells will be drilled by Dunelm
Geotechnical and Environmental Ltd
to extract water from the mines, and
tests will validate whether the scheme
remains fully viable.
Drilling works and construction
of the wells are likely to take until the
autumn to complete at the mine site,
which was abandoned in 1932. JF
Read more at
www.theengineer.co.uk

9 June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk


A
nyone in the market for
a new Peugeot 308 will
be intrigued to find its
dashboard fitted with an
analogue speedometer
instead of a digital display.
This has nothing to do
with adding a little retro chic to
the 308. Instead, it reflects the
decisions car manufacturers are
making in the wake of a global
semiconductor shortage that has
seen Peugeot prioritise chips for
the digital speedometers of models
such as the Peugeot 3008 SUV.
With the sort of elan you
would expect from the automotive
industry, a spokesperson for
Stellantis – formed after the
merger of Peugeot and Fiat
Chrysler – told Reuters that the
analogue speedo was ‘a nifty and
agile way of getting around a real
hurdle for car production, until the
‘chips’ crisis ends’.
The shortage of
semiconductors has been brought
about through a combination
of factors, not least the global
pandemic which ground
production to a halt in 90 per
cent of vehicle and component
factories in China, North America
and Europe.
“In turn, carmakers
heavily reduced purchasing of
semiconductors, just as demand
surged for home computing,
gaming and healthcare products,”
said Matthew Walters, head of
Consultancy Services at car leasing
experts LeasePlan UK. “When
semiconductor manufacturers
restarted at reduced production,
the limited volume available had
already been prioritised elsewhere,
leading to supply constraints as
automotive markets picked up
in the third quarter of the year.
Demand for semiconductor-reliant
technology is increasing, but
supply is struggling to keep up.”
 Walters added that five
semiconductor manufacturers
supply the automotive industry
and two of them – NXP and
Infineon Technologies –
suspended production at their
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
NOVEMBER
News analysis
2019
When the
chips are down
The rebound in automotive manufacturing has been
stymied by a global shortage of semiconductors
WRITTEN BY Jason Ford
facilities in Texas during winter
storms in February.
According to Walters,
AutoForecast Solutions predicts
semiconductor shortages to
reduce vehicle production by
202,000 units during 2021, and a
quarter of that lost volume will
be in Europe. “European industry
association ACEA expects supply
constraints to remain until the
third quarter of 2021, resulting in
“considerably lower” production
volumes and postponed deliveries
for the rest of the year,” he added.
Sarah Riding, a partner at
law firm Gowling, said covid has
heightened attention to supply
chain vulnerabilities, noting that
forecasting, the use of technology
to improve real time demand, and
casting the net across a number
of suppliers to maximise supply
options should all be high up the
agenda.
“For the immediate situation
there are no quick fixes to the
lack of planning,” she said. “Some
[automotive manufacturers]
CHIP MANUFACTURERS ARE INVESTING BILLIONS OF
DOLLARS TO HELP INCREASE OUTPUT CAPACITY, BUT
SHORTAGES WILL NOT GO AWAY ANYTIME SOON
10
are bringing forward the usual
summer shut down periods in the
hope that suppliers will improve
stocks in that period, others
are moving to a more limited
production basis. Flexing the
production schedules in these
ways will help mitigate to some
extent but it will not stop the
interruption.  Chip manufacturers
claim that automotive customers
did not plan for demand enough in
advance and with 3-6 month lead
times the supply chain is under
significant stress.”
“Chip manufacturers are
investing $billions to help
increase output capacity, but
these shortages will not go
away any time soon,” added Ian
Nethercot, MCIPS, supply chain
director, Probrand, a Birmingham-
based technology services
provider.
In February 2021
KPMG published its Global
Semiconductor Industry
Outlook, stating that car makers
– introducing connected, electric,
and self-driving vehicles -
are increasingly important
semiconductor customers. In its
2019 report titled Semiconductors
– the Next Wave, Deloitte
estimated that semiconductor
components will cost $600 per car
by 2022 and that in the next decade
more semiconductor content will
be added to automotive electronics
and subsystems.
Rider believes a long-
term solution could be for
manufacturers to build in-house
technology and capability to
produce such critical components.
Simon Beresford-Wylie, CEO
at Imagination Technologies, a
company that develops processor
solutions for graphics and vision
& AI processing, believes
governments can promote supply
chain diversification by providing
incentives for increased local chip
production while fully remaining
committed to global supply chains.
“In other words, increased
manufacturing at home should be
seen as a means of supplementing,
not displacing, imports from
abroad,” he said. “This is already
underway in Europe, with the EU
setting a target of producing 20 per
cent of the world’s semiconductors
– as opposed to its current 10
per cent market share – and
is finalising plans to launch a
government-industry alliance to
achieve this. In the US, the Biden
administration has ordered a full
review of critical supply chains,
including semiconductors, and
is seeking to boost domestic chip
manufacturing.”
He concluded: “The UK
should consider doing the same
as it sketches out its post-Brexit,
post-pandemic future. It possesses
many of the ingredients needed to
successfully manufacture chips,
from cutting-edge semiconductor
companies and a highly-
developed technology industry
to well-established strengths
in advanced manufacturing.
But an overarching vision from
government is needed if the pieces
are to fall into place.”
 COVER feature Green Energy

HOME IS

WHERE THE
HYDROGEN IS
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk 12
Hydrogen, once on the fringes of the UK energy debate, now
looks set to play a starring role in our low carbon future,
particularly when it comes to warming up our homes.
Jon Excell reports
A
semi-detached show-
home on the outskirts
of Gateshead may seem
an unlikely location for
a technology revolution.
But when this outwardly
unremarkable looking
building opens its doors in the coming
weeks, it will mark a key moment in the
UK’s accelerating transition to a zero-
carbon economy.
That’s because the development
in question - the latest in a series of
pioneering projects being led by the UK
gas sector - will be the site of the first UK
public demonstration of a home fueled
entirely by hydrogen.
With the energy used to heat our
homes and workspaces accounting
for almost 17 per cent of the UK’s total
carbon emissions, a switch to low
carbon heating systems will be critical
to delivering on the UK’s net zero
ambitions.
And whilst it’s expected that a
wide range of technologies - including
heat pumps, electrification, and even
geothermal energy from abandoned
coalmines (The Engineer, September
2020) will play a part, there is a growing
sense across both industry and
government that hydrogen will have the
starring role.
One of the key efforts driving this
has been the BEIS funded and Arup led
Hy4Heat programme which was set up in
2017 to explore the feasibility of replacing
natural gas with hydrogen for heating
and cooking. The aforementioned trial in
Gateshead (the Northern Gas Networks
led Hydrogen House project) is one of
many initiatives funded through the
programme.
Hy4Heat manager - Arup civil
engineer Heidi Genoni - told The
Engineer that the initiative, which
has brought together a consortium of
energy firms, appliance manufacturers,
and researchers, has helped drive a
profound shift in attitudes to the role
that hydrogen might play in our future
energy mix.
When the programme began, she
said, it was as much about ruling out
hydrogen as an option as anything else,
but as the project team worked its way
through key questions on everything
from the feasibility of hydrogen
appliances to public acceptance, the case
for putting the gas at the heart of the
UK’s energy transition grew stronger.
“As the programme’s progressed we’ve
discovered everything is feasible and
found a way over various hurdles,” she
said. “Everyone’s beginning to realise this
really could be a very real possibility.”
One of the keys to this has been the
input from some of the biggest names
in domestic heating, including the UK’s
market leading boiler manufacturer
Worcester Bosch, which has developed
a prototype hydrogen-ready boiler that’s
about to be put through its paces in a
series of major trials.
Worcester Bosch CEO Carl Arntzen
told The Engineer that when the
company began seriously looking into
hydrogen around five years ago, it set
out to answer two key questions: can it
be safely burned in a domestic boiler,
and is it possible to make a hydrogen
boiler that’s the same size as an existing
system?
Artntzen’s team began by looking at
what the differences between hydrogen
and natural gas might mean in terms of
engineering fundamentals.
An early win was the realisation that
13
hydrogen and natural gas have a broadly
similar Wobbe index. This is a measure
of the amount of heat energy within a
given volume of gas. Artnzen explained
that whilst hydrogen has a lower calorific
value than natural gas, its density
is much greater, meaning the same
volumes of hydrogen and natural gas will
give roughly the same heat energy.
This provided early confidence that
not only could a hydrogen boiler be
physically the same size (and therefore
wouldn’t require future customers
to reconfigure their homes) but that
it would also be compatible with the
existing gas network. “The size of the
existing gas network is roughly OK and
supplies the same amount of energy
whether you supply 100 percent natural
gas or 100 per cent hydrogen,” he said.
Nevertheless, the properties of
hydrogen did present a number of
engineering challenges. For instance,
it has a much faster flame speed when
compared to natural gas which, said
Arntzen, created some initial challenges
Below right: H21’s around how to control the combustion
HyStreet project process.
at Spadeadam, The team also encountered some
Northumberand. early problems with “flashback”, a result
Below left: leak of both the flame speed and shorter
testing at HSE’s flame height of hydrogen. “The ignition
Buxton facility
was lighting the fuel upstream of the
burner so we were getting a backfire,” he
explained. “It was perfectly safe but of
course your boiler going bang every few
minutes is not really desirable!” Both of
these findings prompted a redesign of the
burner face to more effectively manage
the flow of the gas within the appliance.
Another key challenge was around
monitoring and controlling the flame.
Whilst existing domestic boilers sense
the presence of a flame by detecting the
electric current generated by carbon
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk

molecules within the gas, the absence
of carbon molecules in hydrogen meant
they had to look at different solutions for
flame detection.
At this point, said Arntzen, it became
clear that it wouldn’t be possible to
simply convert existing gas boilers to
run on hydrogen, and the concept of a
hydrogen-ready boiler was born, a system
that would initially run on natural gas
but which could be switched over to
hydrogen with a minimum of fuss. “It
goes into your house and burns natural
gas, then, four or five years after you
have it installed when you get notified
that your area is going to be converted
to hydrogen we come back in, quickly
change a few components, and that
boiler’s ready to burn hydrogen.”
Along with an assortment of
hydrogen appliances developed by other
manufacturers - including the UK’s other
big boiler manufacturer Baxi - Worcester
Bosch’s prototype boiler is now being
evaluated through two major trials: the
Gateshead Hydrogen House project and
H100Fife - a hugely ambitious Scottish
Gas Networks (SGN) initiative that will
see green hydrogen produced by offshore
wind powered electrolysers supplied to
around 300 homes in Levenmouth, near
Fife, on the east coast of Scotland.
As well as providing further evidence
of the feasibility of hydrogen appliances,
these trials will also shed valuable light
on the arguably more complex challenge
of getting hydrogen onto the gas
networks and into peoples’ homes.
One person wrestling with this
particular conundrum is Dr Danielle
Stewart, Long Term Strategy Manager for
Gas transmission at National Grid.
Stewart told The Engineer that thanks
to studies carried out through National
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
COVER feature Green Energy
Grid’s Hydrogen national transmission
system program (HYNTS) there’s now a
high degree of confidence that it will be
possible to use the existing gas network
for hydrogen. However, there are a
number of challenges along the way.
For instance, whilst the low pressure
(7bar) polyethylene pipes of the
distribution network could - she said - be
more or less immediately repurposed
for hydrogen, there are concerns that
hydrogen could lead to embrittlement
of the high pressure (94 bar) steel
pipes used on the transmission side.
Interestingly, earlier studies carried out
by the HSE suggest that doping hydrogen
with a tiny amount of oxygen could help
prevent this from occurring.
National Grid has now embarked
on a series of initiatives aimed at fully
understanding the integrity, age and
condition of its assets before a transition
to hydrogen takes place. It is also gearing
up for its biggest study yet, FutureGrid,
which will see it join forces with gas
distribution companies, research groups
and others to explore in detail the
possibility of converting the national
transmission system to hydrogen.
The first phase of this project -
which received £10 million funding
from OfFGEM just before Christmas
14
- will see a mini offline hydrogen
transmission system built from a range
of decomissioned assets at DNV GL’s site
The H100Fife
in Spadeadam, Northumberland. This
project will see
network will be tested with a range of
green hydrogen
supplied to around different natural gas / hydrogen blends,
300 homes in beginning with two per cent hydrogen
Levenmouth, and working up to 100 per cent. “The
Scotland aim is to understand the impact of
hydrogen in our assets,” said Stewart.
“What happens when we put a blend of
hydrogen in, what happens with 100 per
cent hydrogen? Do the assets cope, do we
need to replace them, or intervene in a
smaller way?”
Whilst National Grid’s key area of
concern is the transmission network,
FutureGrid will overlap with a further
initiative - the OFGEM funded H21 project
- that’s exploring some of the challenges
around the distribution network that
will bring hydrogen into people’s homes.
Running since 2017 the project has
already carried out a number of key
trials, including detailed leak testing at
purpose built HSE facilities in Buxton,
Derbyshire. The next phase will see the
construction of an offline distribution
network, also at Spadeadam, that will
Worcester Bosch be connected to a row of purpose-
CEO Carl Artnzen built demonstration homes known as
with the chancellor HyStreet.
Rishi Sunak As confidence in the technology
grows, so does the conviction that it has
a key role to play in the transition of the
next decade. And there’s now a palpable
sense of momentum to a sector that - just
a few years ago - was at the fringes of the
energy debate. “There is an urgency,”
said Stewart. “There’s a lot of network to
transition to hydrogen if that’s the way
we go as a country. We’ve got 7.5km of
pipelines on the transmission network
alone and the distribution network
significantly increases that. That doesn’t
happen over night”.
What this transition might look
like is open to debate, but it seems
likely that the switch will begin with
an imperceptible blending of the gas
into our existing networks. Such an
approach, said Stewart, could be key to
building up the demand for hydrogen
and driving the mass industrialisiation
of the technologies that will be required
to produce green hydrogen (see box
out). What’s more, as conveniently
demonstrated by the recently concluded
HyDeploy project at Keele University, end
use devices are able to function, without
any modifications, on a blend of natural
gas with 20 per cent hydrogen.
Blending will only get us so far
however. And ultimately some big
decisions will need to be made on what
strategy we use to get to 100 per cent.
“There is a question around how you
do that,” said Stewart. “Do you start
regionalising and breaking the network
up and having regions on hydrogen and
ultimately joining it all back together?
Or do you just keep increasing the blend
until you get to 100 per cent?”
Bosch’s Carl Arntzen believes a
phased transition akin to the UK’s
conversion from towns gas to natural
gas (which took place in the 1960s and
70s) represents the most sensible way
forward. “What we’re suggesting to
government is that from a certain date in
the future they mandate that every boiler
should be hydrogen ready, then you can
repeat the conversion of the gas network
that took place in the 1970s. The concept
is to replace it town by town, city by city.
The gas grid is a grid, so they can isolate
various parts off and start supplying
different types of gas to those houses.”
For Worcester Bosch and other
appliance manufacturers, such a shift
represents a potentially huge market
opportunity, however Arntzen was keen
to stress that he doesn’t think hydrogen
will be the only route to decarbonisation.
“Whilst hydrogen will be the appropriate
solution for many existing homes,
electrifying heating in certain buildings
will be the right thing to do,” he said.
Indeed, he believes that low
temperature heating systems like heat
pumps, along with proper thermal
insulation, should be the preferred
solution for new build homes, adding
that they should be applied immediately
rather than waiting for new government
regulations to kick in in 2025. “Why not
do it now?,” he asked. “Because all of the
houses that you build between now and
then you’re going to have to refurbish to
hit your targets.”
Nevertheless, hydrogen is expected
to play a key role, and its case is
strengthened by the fact that it’s also
being considered by a range of other
sectors. “In the last couple of years
it’s really gathered momentum,” said
Arntzen, “And I think that’s because
when you look at the challenge of
decarbonising the whole economy
there are other sectors such as heavy
industry and heavy goods transport
where hydrogen is being given serious
consideration – if you’ve got a demand
in two big sectors of the economy when
you add domestic heat to it you can see a
serious future for a hydrogen economy.”
Hy4Heat’s Heidi Genoni agreed that
hydrogen’s “all-rounder” credentials add
to its attractiveness. “There are several
decarbonisarion pathways and success
is likely to come from a mixture of all
of them,” she said, “Looking at certain
criteria in isolation hydrogen doesn’t
come first, but it comes second in
everything.”
Genoni added that hydrogen is also
particularly well suited to the UK, which
has a huge existing gas network as well
as a large amount of old housing stock
where electrification could be more
challenging and costly than using gas.
“Clearly, it’s less wasteful and better to
reuse existing infrastructure where
possible,” she said. “The UK has one of
the most comprehensive gas networks
in the world. We should aim to reuse
that existing gas network particularly
15
Green Hydrogen Supply
Although hydrogen is already produced in large volumes, the bulk of
this is so-called “brown hydrogen” derived from fossil fuels using
processes that the International Energy Authority (IEA) says is
responsible for around 830 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year.
Clearly, if it’s to deliver on its decarbonising potential – and
replace a significant chunk of the estimated 78.8 billion tonnes of
natural gas used every year by the UK - cleaner methods of production
are essential, and the quest to develop this missing part of the jigsaw
is now a major driver of innovation.
Initially, this is likely to fuel greater investment in blue hydrogen
production, where carbon capture and storage (CCS) is used to capture
the CO2 produced by existing processes.
But it’s the developments in green hydrogen production – using
giant renewably powered electrolysers to extract hydrogen from water
– that are perhaps most exciting of all. Hydrogen produced in this
way could – it’s claimed – play a key role in decarbonising industrial
processes, domestic heating and transport, whilst offering an elegant
method of storing excess renewable energy.
Although there is some debate over how quickly green hydrogen
production could be scaled up, a number of large scale projects
(Growing a Green Gas Giant The Engineer, July 2020) are making
significant progress.
given that it’s been invested in over the
last 20 years by replacing the old iron
mains with these new plastic pipes
which are perfect for the distribution
of hydrogen.”
Given the levels of expertise in the UK,
Genoni is optimistic that the transition
to hydrogen could be achieved relatively
quickly. What’s needed now, she said, is a
joined-up push from everyone involved.
“In order to move forward we’ve got to
The Keele
get into a delivery mindset. We know
Univeristy led
what the scale of the decarbonisation
HyDeploy project
demonstrated that challenge is, we’ve done the feasibility
devices are able to studies, we’ve got the technologies, we’ve
function without now got to get on and start implementing
moidification on a the plans...there is no time to waste.”
natural gas blend Echoing Genoni’s rallying cry, Arntzen
including 20 per called on government to make a firm
cent hydrogen commitment to the UK’s hydrogen
future. “We’ve done four or five years of
research, we’re more and more confident
that this is completely doable. We now
need a decision from government. The
future gas network, will it be converted
to hydrogen? Give us an answer. Mandate
when hydrogen boilers come in and then
we can all get on with it and invest in the
industrialisation of the prototypes that
we’ve developed.”
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk

I
f someone told you a material
existed that could dramatically
improve the range of an electric
vehicle, yet add nothing to the
price of its powertrain, you
might get out of your seat. If
they then added that this wonder
substance naturally occurred
beyond our solar system, you
might understandably sit down
again.
But bear with me – because
this is no flight of fantasy. When
used in a new generation of
electric vehicles, silicon carbide
has the potential to bring a step
change, without any cost burden.
In fact, it could even be described
as ‘free’.
Highly abundant in space,
silicon carbide is essentially
stardust, found on carbon-rich
stars. On Earth, naturally-
occurring silicon carbide does
exist, but the only way you’ll come
across it is in a meteorite – and in
miniscule amounts.
Thankfully, global industry
has a tried-and-tested route to
mass-producing a synthetic
version, by mixing silica sand
and carbon at enormously high
temperatures. Which is just as
well because SiC – to give it its
chemical name – brings major
advances in electronic devices,
offering higher power levels,
lower power losses and improved
overall efficiency.
How does that benefit an
EV? Well, it all comes down to a
component called the inverter.
An essential part of an EV
powertrain, inverters are the
crucial interface between battery
and electric motor, converting DC
charge from the battery to AC to
drive the motor. They also time
the switching changes to adjust
the frequency of the AC charge to
control the speed of the motor too.
Or, to put it another way, if you
imagine the battery is like a petrol
car’s fuel tank and the electric
motor is the engine, the inverter
is effectively the fuel injection
system. And the faster and more
efficient the inverter is, the more
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
VIEWPOINT
$2,000 per unit versus $1,000),
they can reduce the size of the
battery by such a large amount
that the cost saving more than
pays for the inverter itself.
That gives a car maker two
options: pass on the cost saving
to the customer (or spend it on
IAN FOLEY another component) and offer a
vehicle that has the same or likely
Add stardust
better range than before (thanks
to the virtuous circle of lighter
weight), or keep the battery
for the next
the same size and offer even
more range thanks to increased
leap in EV
efficiency.
And the more the vehicle is
used, the greater the benefits – as
performance
it is with commercial vehicles.
An e-truck or e-bus might easily
cover one million kilometers in
its life and over that time a SiC
inverter could bring cost savings
New inverter technology can make enormous close to $40,000.
improvements in EV efficiency and it’s all thanks to Right now, SiC inverters
one amazing substance, says Ian Foley, managing have not been adopted in the
mass market because of their
director, Equipmake
upfront price – but that’s about
to change. And do so very quickly
indeed. Passenger battery electric
efficient the whole vehicle is – aerodynamic and packaging vehicles (BEVs) equipped with
which means you get more range improvements, reducing the silicon carbide inverters are
from the battery. amount of cooling a vehicle might predicted to overtake those with
Traditional inverters use require, too. traditional IGBT units by 2024
insulated-gate bipolar transistors Factor in a power-to-weight and, by 2030, 95 per cent of all
(IGBTs), which switch current ratio of 100kW/kg – versus BEVs will use silicon carbide. So
at up to 20kHz, but the very 40kW/kg for contemporary IGBT the market is huge and growing.
latest SiC-mosfet (metal-oxide- technology – and you can start At Equipmake, we’ve been
semiconductor field-effect to see how much of a benefit developing inverters for nearly
transistor) versions can do this technology can bring, a decade – making our own
80kHz. Not only is a much higher especially when you consider the gate-drivers and writing our
switching speed important for enormous effort car makers put own software too – alongside
driving small high-speed motors into optimising EVs for increased designing and manufacturing
used in some EV applications, but range. entire e-powertrains. They
also the power density improves In a typical high performance are a crucial part of the entire
as the switching speed increases. EV sports saloon, for example, the electric drivetrain system and
Which we’ll come to in a moment. associated efficiencies brought we’ll be launching our own high
SiC-mosfet inverters also also by a silicon carbide inverter can performance SiC inverter very
bring a significant reduction reduce the size of the battery by soon.
in total inverter loses and are at least 10 per cent – or around There’s no doubt this new
smaller and lighter, allowing 40-50kg. While they can be twice technology will overtake demand
engineers to take advantage of as expensive as IGBT versions (at for our existing IGBT inverters
very rapidly indeed. After all,
how often does an innovation
THE EFFICIENCIES BROUGHT BY A SILICON CARBIDE arrive that genuinely gives you
INVERTER CAN REDUCE THE SIZE OF THE BATTERY BY AT something for nothing. And you
can even say it comes from outer
LEAST 10 PER CENT - OR AROUND 40 - 50KG space too.
16
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B
oris Johnson’s pledge
to accelerate carbon
emissions cuts by 15
years will commit the UK
to one of the strongest
legally binding emissions
targets in the world.
The new commitment will
set the UK on course to cut
carbon emissions by 78 per cent
(compared to 1990 levels) by
2035. It will replace an earlier
commitment to reduce emissions
by at least 68 per cent.
The UK government claims
that the ambitious new target will
enable the UK to take a position
of global leadership on climate
change and help it seize the new
economic opportunities presented
by green technologies.
According to a government
statement, the UK over-achieved
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
TALKING POINT
IN OUR OPINION
Emissions
impossible?
The UK’s newly accelerated emissions cuts are
amongst the most ambitious on the planet,
but are the plans realistic and how might they
impact industry? asks Jon Excell
against its first and second
Carbon Budgets and is on track
to outperform the third Carbon
Budget which ends in 2022. This,
it claims, is due to significant cuts
in greenhouse gases across the
economy and industry, with the
UK bringing emissions down 44%
overall between 1990 and 2019, and
two-thirds in the power sector.
The UK continues to break
18
records in renewable electricity
generation, which has more than
quadrupled since 2010 while low
carbon electricity overall now
gives us over 50% of our total
generation.
However, whilst many have
welcomed the government’s
increasingly ambitious stance,
the latest announcement has
also been met with scepticism
from a number of quarters. Some
– including the current shadow
business secretary Ed Miliband
– have accused the government
of failing to match rhetoric with
reality, suggesting that it lacks a
clear strategy for delivering on the
new target. Others have suggested
that many areas of the economy
will be negatively impacted by a
tightening of emissions targets.
In a recent online poll on
the topic we asked readers how
they think UK industry will be
affected. Will the pressure and
urgency generated by the new
target help stimulate and drive
the development of the green
technologies that will be vital
to achieve this transition? Will
existing areas of industry be
negatively affected by the move?
Or are the government’s plans
simply unachievable?
 Read more
comment, news and features
www.theengineer.co.uk

IN YOUR OPINION
Poll: How will the UK’s new carbon
emissions target impact industry?
Our poll on the topic attracted responses from 303 individuals. Sadly, technical optimism has
The largest single sample group, 43 per cent, were positive replaced pragmatic realism where
about the tightening of emissions targets, believing that the the climate is involved. The UK has
government’s decision will stimulate the development of low many more pressing issues (number
carbon technologies. However, the majority of respondents were of people in poverty, lack of housing
unimpressed by the plans, with 37 per cent believing the targets to start with) to spend its wealth on
to be unrealistic and unachievable, and 19 per cent claiming than closing down what remains of
that they will negatively impact the existing industrial base. the heavy industry.
Interestingly, a number of readers remarked that a combination
Jack Broughton
of all three outcomes was a realistic possibility.
The targets set are unrealistic, unachievable
and overlook some major issues (future
certainty of power generation and not total
These goals are laudable and
possibly achievable. One of the
unforseen consequences is
that it will continue to grow the
gap between the haves and the
havenots. The cost of new domestic
boilers for example are way beyond
what ordinary people can afford.
There is also the question of
whether this is truly a green
economy or are we moving our
emissions abroad by offshoring
manufacturing industries in order
that we can claim that we have
done our bit?
Peter Thomas

19.47% reliance on renewables (wind at < 5% on

the grid for weeks). There seems to be
an agenda and naive belief that the the front for a change so we can export
new green economy will deliver major technologies (similar to Germany or Denmark

43.23%
economic and work force gains.
Will the announced positions lead
to a tiered society with those able to
purchase power, heat exchangers,
electric cars and the rest lording
it over the toiling masses reduced
with wind power or USA with Tesla vehicles)
There is a balance though, if policies hit
people too hard in the wallet then support
will quickly disappear and we can expect
climate sceptic politicians to start appearing.
richs 

37.29%
It will supercharge green technology
development: 43.23%
It will negatively impact the existing
industrial base: 37.29%
The target is unrealistic and unachievable: 19.47%
to cold, dark, disease and hunger
(and bicycles)? Even if the trumpeted
measures are enshrined in law how will
they be applied and what sort of transition
period positions are contemplated.
Phil Mortimer
There is almost a justification for an “all of
the above”
Whenever there is change then there are
winners and losers, the industries that adapt
will survive and perhaps thrive. I see that BP
and Shell have ambitious plans to transform
to a post oil world. I will be watching to see if
they follow through
If the decarbonisation of the country is
applied at all levels of government and their
strategies are consistent then companies
can invest. It would be nice if we were at
Clearly with 14 years to go and the required
‘green’ technology either not available, not
funded or not affordable for the majority of
the population it is unachievable.
It is unrealistic as the UKs infrastructure
cannot support the proposed technologies
and currently there are no plans in the
pipeline to address this.
Is this just PR hype by a government that
has form with empty promises ?
Meanwhile, Heathrow expansion is still
on the books, HS2 is ploughing ahead and
hundreds of millions are still being spent on
supporting fossil fuel projects overseas.
I’m all for clean and green technologies
but this ain’t it.
Another Steve

Provided the government invests in innovation and funds inventors

and small companies it is achievable, but if they simply give the
money to the emitters and oil , gas, coal and nuclear then it will fail.
They will take the money and add it to their bottom line. It is not in
HAVE YOUR SAY their interest to change, and have stranded asserts.
Visit our website to take part John Patrick Ettridge
in the continuing debate on
this emotive topic

19 June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk


A
s the issue of climate change
becomes an increasingly
pressing force, the calls
for innovative solutions to
decarbonise the transport
sector are growing louder.
And the UK government’s recently
updated emissions target (a 78 per cent
reduction by 2035) has amplified this
push.
Bristol-based Vertical Aerospace
is one company that plans to bring
these much-demanded solutions to the
forefront, through the development of
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
NOVEMBER
Aerospace2019
Upwardly
mobile
an electrically powered piloted vertical take-off and landing
aircraft (eVTOL) that could be carrying passengers as soon as
2024.
The company’s mission is “in some respects very simple:
to make green zero-carbon Urban Air Mobility (UAM) a reality,
and to be the first to do so,”said Mike Gascoyne, CTO at Vertical
Aerospace and former Formula 1 engineer for teams including
McLaren, Sauber, Jordan, Tyrell and Renault. “It’s kind of the
holy grail of the aerospace industry at the moment, a lot of
people are talking about it — autonomous vehicles, vehicles
able to fly in inner cities, carbon-free, low noise… but it comes
with a huge amount of technical challenges given current
technology.”
It’s these very technical challenges that Gascoyne believes
20
Vertical is well equipped to address,
thanks to the expertise of its team and
industry partners and, particularly,
the management team’s background
in motorsport. Both Gascoyne and the
company’s founder Stephen Fitzpatrick
— also founder of clean energy group
OVO — came to Vertical from the world
of F1.
Prior to the formation of Vertical,
Gascoyne had set up his own
consultancy, MGI Motorsport, after
around 30 years with F1, aiming to
bring the same standards of technology

Zero-carbon
aircraft
manufacturer
Vertical Aerospace
is on a mission
to revolutionise
urban air mobility
with its VA-X4
eVTOL.
Melissa Bradshaw
reports
and lightweight composite structural
engineering to the mainstream.
“F1 has put a huge amount of money
into solving technical problems that
are very relevant in every other area,
but they’ve been able to invest far
more money than perhaps commercial
organisations could do,” Gascoyne
said. With MGI, the goal was to bring
that knowledge to mainstream and
aerospace engineering in a more
affordable way, without all of the
development costs.
Fitzpatrick approached Gascoyne
to work together and bought MGI, now Vertical Advanced
Engineering, a deal that Gascoyne described as easy to
do. “Working with Stephen was very attractive, he’s a very
dynamic guy in what he wanted to do with Vertical and green
engineering, and what he’s doing with OVO and carbon-free
energy is a very relevant thing, very aligned with my own
views,” said Gascoyne. “What he wanted to do in engineering
terms, to bring to Vertical, was exactly what we wanted to bring
to companies like Vertical, so it was a very easy fit.”
Commenting on the challenges that can be solved through
application of motorsport engineering knowledge, Gascoyne
said that one major obstacle in developing a certifiable
eVTOL is the limitation around battery weight. “Unlike any
conventionally fuelled vehicle you don’t burn off any fuel,
21
you carry those batteries the whole
time so your aircraft doesn’t get any
lighter,” Gascoyne said. “The batteries
are what they are, the people and the
payload is what it is, so you’ve got to
take the weight out of smaller parts of
the aircraft and I think utilising the F1
skills in lightweight structural design is
absolutely key.
“Formula 1 cars are a sort of
masterpiece of engineering packaging,
and although yes, you have big internal
combustion engines, you’ve also
got vehicle hybrid power, battery
power, energy recovery, very complex
electronic management systems for all
the systems on the car.
“Those are exactly the problems
you’re solving on the aircraft:
lightweight structural solutions,
packaging and powertrains, cooling of
power trains, flight control systems,
HV systems, battery integration …
Formula 1 is based on very small gains
so every advantage you can get is taken,
and that’s what you have to do at the
moment to make eVTOLs work, the
synergies are very great.”
Vertical’s current eVTOL project,
the VA-X4, will be a piloted eight-rotor
lifting aircraft including four front tilt
rotors. Set to be able to fly at speeds over
150mph with a 100m range initially, it
has been designed for near-silent flight
in multiple applications and will carry
up to four passengers.
With design stages now moving
into early production, the aim is to fly
a technology demonstrator prototype
in the final quarter of 2021. “This is a
novel aircraft, so there’s a huge amount
of learning to do as we build and
commission it,” Gascoyne said. “It’s a
huge challenge, but we’re still on target
to fly it in ’21.”
The team hopes that the VA-X4 will
be one of the very first commercial zero
carbon aircraft to carry passengers,
with an aim of becoming fully certified
by the CAA and EASA, ready for initial
commercial services in 2024. This,
Gascoyne believes, is an area where
Vertical can really stand out from the
competition.
“There’s a lot of people in the sector
talking about designing and making
aircraft, but there’s very few who have
realistic plans to not just design and
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk

make an aircraft and fly it initially, but to
turn that into a certifiable aircraft that
you can make in large numbers and is
commercially viable,” he said. “There’s
very few people in the sector that have a
credible route to that and we feel that’s a
real strength of our company.”
Two of Vertical’s prototypes have
already been flown — the VA-X1, a
quad copter which was granted flight
permission by the CAA in 2018, and the
VA-X2, a multi-rotored aircraft described
as a ‘good step forward in capability’
by Gascoyne. The VA-X4, he added,
is a ‘huge step up’ from the previous
vehicles in terms of its complexity and
capabilities.
Partners with high standards of
expertise will be key to upgrading the
VA-X4 and taking it from its prototype
stage to a fully certifiable aircraft
at a commercially viable position,
Gascoyne said. Earlier this year, the
company announced a partnership
with aerospace and defence giant
Rolls-Royce. The collaboration was
announced to be the first commercial
deal in the UAM market for Rolls, which
is aiming to develop sustainable tech
for aviation, marine and industrial
applications.
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
Aerospace
Rolls-Royce’s role will be to develop the electrical power
system for the certified version of the aircraft, which will be
based on the demonstrator planned for flight this year. “The
first version will fly with more off-the-shelf type equipment,
but Rolls-Royce will be key in replacing the powertrain with
something suitable for a certified aircraft which will need to be
much lighter weight and higher performance,” said Gascoyne.
Other major partners involved in the development of the
VA-X4 include aerospace and architectural engineering firm
Honeywell, which is working on the flight control system,
and materials specialists Solvay, who will supply composite
materials.
According to Gascoyne, statistics show that the eVTOL
will have airliner type levels of reliability, be ‘100 times safer
than a helicopter’ and ’30 to 50 times’ less loud — allowing
the vehicle to safely fly over urban airspace and take off and
land in confined spaces in addition to being carbon-free. “Its
advantages when you can make it safe are huge,” he said.
Whilst Vertical is charging ahead to get the aircraft in
service by its target of 2024/25, there are a number of related
steps that will need to be taken to support the integration
of UAM as a viable sustainable mode of transport, not least
building up the infrastrucuture, said Gascoyne.
22
Lightweight solutions inspired by motorsport
are at the heart of th VA-X4 design
“If you’re testing and designing
an electric car, all the roads exist.
You design this type of vehicle and
actually, the airports for it in the
right places don’t necessarily exist,
the air space control systems don’t
necessarily exist, so you’ve got to
build up the infrastructure as well and
that’s something we’re looking at with
partners to be involved in.
“Of course you can fly out of
conventional airports but that’s not
really what it’s here to do, it’s there to
transport you from the places you can’t
currently fly from and get quickly and
conveniently into places where it’d be
hours by road and even more hours if
you got a local flight.”
With UK Research and Innovation
set to pump £125m into its Future Flight
Challenge in support of sustainable air
travel, and Urban Air Port’s ‘Air-One’ -
planned to be the world’s first airport for
eVTOLs - announced as a winner of the
funding, it seems that UAM is no longer
the futuristic, abstract concept it once
was. And Vertical Aerospace, Bristol’s
ambitious new aviation pioneer, is well
placed to play a starring role in this
emerging sector.
 bokers.com
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 r o b ot i c s

Emerging
field
A UK demonstration of AI enabled robots
that identify and kill individual weeds with
electricity could pave the way for a new
approach to sustainable crop farming.
Jon Excell reports

E
arlier this spring, in a chilly
corner of a windswept field
in Hampshire, the first seeds
of what could be a new
agricultural revolution were
sown, as a UK built precision
weeding robot – with more than a
passing resemblance to a mechanised
alien invader - completed its first set of
successful field trials.
Developed by agritech startup the
Small Robot company, Dick -as the robot
is named - is claimed to be the world’s
first non-chemical robotic weeding
system for cereal crops.
Designed to destroy weeds at an
individual plant level the system is
at the vanguard of a new approach to
low impact farming, that is tapping
into advances in robotics, imaging
and artificial intelligence to provide
a targeted alternative to the high
impact, herbicide-dependent methods
that dominate modern farming and
which are becoming increasingly
unsustainable. Rather than using
chemicals to deal with problem plants,
Dick simply despatches them with a
blast of high voltage electricity.
The robot is actually part of a suite
of robotic systems, including crop
monitoring robot “Tom” and an AI
system called Wilma that the company
plans to sell as a service to farms across
the UK and beyond.
Tom, which was launched
as a commercial product earlier
this year and is manufactured by
Northumberland firm Tharsus can

June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk 24

“ At Babcock, our people don’t just work with
technology, they make it work for them.”
Jon Hall, Managing Director

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 robotics

be controlled either manually or

autonomously and trundles around the
field imaging individual plants in high
resolution detail.
The system is capable of mapping
around 20 Hectares and 6 terabytes
which are uploaded to the cloud and
analysed by “Wilma”, an AI system that
identifies the crops, spots undesirable
weeds, and supplies intelligence and
data to the farmer. According to the
company, future versions of the system
will even be able to assess soil health
and biodiversity by gathering data on
birdsong and pollinators.
This data can then be sent to
Dick, which is despatched to destroy
the offending weeds using a
series of robotically
controlled zappers on
its underbelly. “Using
artificial intelligence,
the robots can recognize
the weeds in the
[camera] shot and target
the robotic arm onto t e AI identifies it Dick’s weed- technology such as spot spraying, spot
those weeds,” explained a weed, and then zappers are mounted fertilizing or slug killing “Our robotic
on delta robot arms
Andy Hall, head of decides where platform incorporating the igus arm
supplie by polymer
prototyping at the Small t zap it,” explained bearings specialist could have many different technologies
Robot Company. igus engineer igus UK bolted on - and the world’s our oyster on
Developed by another ngelos Bitivelias. that,” said SRC’s Andy Hall.
UK agritech startup, The kinematics of If adopted at scale the approach
RootWave, these zappers the delta makes it pioneered by SRC could have a major
deliver 10 - 12,000 volt well suited to the end effector and the impact. Despite the UK using ever
blasts of electricity to the weed, however belt drive means the zapper is always increasing amounts of herbicides and
Hall told The Engineer that the company parallel to the ground below.” fungicides, yields have remained static
is also exploring the potential use SRC’s Andy Hall said that the igus for more than a quarter of a century, and
of other technologies such as lasers, delta robot – which was originally the huge tractors and harvesters used on
and potentially the development of a developed for pick and place industrial farm around the world are compacting
hybrid system that could use different applications - was chosen for its soils and forcing farmers to use ever
techniques depending on the conditions. relatively low cost and durability. more intensive methods. Systems like
The zappers are moved into “The affordability, precision, those developed by SRC could help
position by three delta robot arms durability and reliability of the igus farmers find a way out of this damaging
(parallel robots consisting of three delta robots are perfect for this and feedback loop.
arms connected to universal joints at new agricultural applications,” said “This is a major technological
the base) supplied by polymer bearing igus UK Managing Director, Matthew milestone which will enable automated,
specialist igus UK. Aldridge. He added that one of the key precision, per-plant weeding both at
Stepper motors linked to controllers features of the delta components is they scale and autonomously, for the first
help position the delta robot directly are lubrication-free, and therefore less time providing a post-chemical future
over the weeds. The motors have prone to becoming clogged up with soil for arable farmers,” Said Ben Scott-
encoders, which help the delta know and water in a muddy field. Robinson, CEO and Co-founder, Small
what position it is in, whilst Dick’s Following the successful field trials Robot Company. “We’ve now proved we
master controller and AI “speak” to the this April, Tom and Dick will now can deliver per plant weeding: a world
igus motor controller to synchronise enter further trials in which the force first. The focus for us now is being
the robot’s position with the delta required to destroy different types of able to move forward to deliver this,
arm, forming a closed loop monitoring weeds will be explored in greater detail. repeatedly, and at scale. This will be
system. “The Dick robot moves to one SRC and igus are also looking to game-changing.
side, a camera takes a photo of the weed, work on different applications for the

June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk 26

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LEADING THE CHARGE
T
wo years ago no-one had heard of
Britishvolt, but today the company
- founded in December 2019 by
businessman Orral Nadjari - is at the
forefront of an ambitious plan to propel
the UK onto the A-list of European
battery manufacturing nations.
Backed by £2.6bn of investment - one of the
largest ever industrial investments in the UK -
the firm is now poised to begin construction of
a giant gigafactory in Blyth, Northumberland
that will ultimately produce around 30GWh
of lithium-ion batteries each year (enough
to power 300,000 passenger cars) delivering
a capability said by many to be critical to the
future of UK automotive.
In its bid to pull off what might well turn
out to be one of the most ambitious scale-
up operations in UK industrial history, the
company has set about recruiting some of
the brightest minds in battery technology;
including world-leading electrochemist Dr
Allan Paterson, who joined as Chief Technology
Officer (CTO) from the Faraday Institution in
October 2020.
Paterson is something of a veteran of the UK
battery sector, beginning his involvement with
the technology as an academic at St Andrews
where he worked on the development of
cathode materials for next generation lithium-
ion cell systems, before being tempted into
industry by Scottish battery firm Axeon (later
acquired by Johnson Matthey) which was
beginning to look at automotive applications
for its technology. “It was a great chance to join
at the beginning of an emerging technology
area and be leading some of the science behind
it,” he told The Engineer.
After a spell in industry (at both Johnson
Matthey and Cummins) it was this desire to be
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
INTERVIEW Dr All an Paterson
As UK startup Britishvolt
prepares to begin building
Britain’s first battery
gigaplant, Jon Excell spoke
to its Chief Technology
Officer - world-leading
electrochemist Dr Allan
Paterson - about the firm’s
vision and the challenges
of scaling up from scratch
at the vanguard whilst remaining close to the
science that drove Paterson’s 2018 move to the
Faraday Institution, an organisation established
to tap into and accelerate the commercial
potential of some of the breakthroughs being
made by the UK’s battery research base. “The
opportunity to be in there at the start of trying
to build a capability for the UK that would
hopefully get us to that world class stage was a
fantastic place to be - it was great to be coming
back to the hardcore science but always with an
industrial hat on,” he said.
During his two and a half years as Head
of Programme Management at the Faraday
Institution, Paterson observed a marked
acceleration of the UK’s battery capabilities,
with the research base increasingly energised
by the commercial opportunities, and the
emergence of facilities like Coventry’s UK
Battery Industrialistion Centre (UKBIC)
providing a practical route for accelerating
the impact of this innovation. And when a
28
company emerged with the ambition to leverage
all of this expertise, Paterson jumped at the
chance to be in at the beginning again. “To
try and hit the ground running really hard to
deliver a Gigafactory is a big scary opportunity
but a really exciting one,” he said.
With many gigaplants already in operation
around the world -including a number across
Europe - it’s reasonable to ask whether it might
be simpler, and quicker, to replicate an existing
manufacturing solution rather than build a
new indigenous capability from scratch. But
Britishvolt, explained Paterson, is about much
more than playing catchup.
The company’s plan is to tap into the UK’s
rich pool of scientific expertise and create a
flexible manufacturing capability - in lockstep
with the ongoing developments in battery
technology and chemistry - that will enable it
to meet evolving customer requirements, and
go beyond the capabilities of many existing
capabilities around the world. “Britishvolt is
not looking to translate in or copy and paste an
existing technology from an existing battery
supplier”, he said. “We’re looking to analyse
every step of the process and bake in a degree of
capability and flexibility that is slightly above
and beyond, to try and have a manufacturing
technology capability and a pipeline of
materials and cell chemistry technologies that
come together to deliver something that’s great
and matched to target applications.”
It’s a plan that Paterson believes will deliver
a competitive edge for the UK automotive
industry and which could – he said – ultimately
see the construction of Britishvolt plants
around the world.
But getting to that point won’t be
straightforward. Indeed, setting up a large-
scale automated facility that can reliably
produce high volumes of high-performance
batteries represents a complex and exacting
manufacturing challenge. “What you’re trying
to control is the microstructure in an electrode
layer that’s coated on a substrate that’s 10
microns thick.” explained Paterson. “You’re
trying to take highly complex materials….and
formulate them in a way that you can then
go and make those electrodes retain their
fundamental ability to store charge and deliver
power.”
Whilst various Faraday Institution funded
projects and UKBIC have made great strides in
understanding how to take advanced battery
technologies into production, moving up to
the level of mass manufacturing is a new
challenge for the UK. “We’re spending a lot of
effort looking at how we translate up through
those scales, how we control the parameters
for ensuring the thing we get out at the end is
exactly as we expected and that it delivers when
we put it in a cell, stack all the electrodes up
and make a real device…that’s not an area of
manufacturing tech that the UK has had in the
battery space.”
One of the key challenges here, he said,
is ensuring that the UK has the skills base
required to deliver all of this. “The labour force
required to directly support the gigafactory is
a few thousand people. Some of those skills do
exist in the UK, in the North East we’re blessed
by being close to Nissan who do a chunk of the
processing and manufacturing technology,
but it’s one of those things that we have to be
looking at, and are looking at now.”
In an effort to help build this pipeline of
talent BritishVolt is now working closely
with a number of organisations, including
UKBIC, the Faraday Institution, WMG and
SMMT to explore how the education system
can support the requirements of the sector.
“There’s a curriculum being built that mirrors
the equivalent in the automotive industry but is
very much battery driven,” he said.
Meanwhile, up in Blyth, the Britishvolt team
has already started digging holes and carrying
out surveys and hopes to begin “breaking ground
in anger” towards the back end of the summer.
Paterson describes the location as the
“premier site” for a gigafactory in the UK, and Nevertheless, despite Britain’s belated
it’s not difficult to see why the firm ditched arrival on the gigafactory scene, Paterson
earlier plans to build its first plant in Wales. believes it’s well-placed to achieve the scale-up
With main roads, a railhead, and a newly that’s now required. “The science is there, the
rejuvenated deep-water port on the doorstep, it’s understanding of the technology is world class,
well connected to key logistics networks, and and some of the research groups within the UK
available land directly next to the site provides are amazing. The ability to deliver against this
plenty of scope for co-locating and consolidating and support the wider industry is a fantastic
key elements of the supply chain. thing to be involved in. Lithium-
What’s more, the site has great ion cells were invented in
access to renewable energy, the UK and effectively
thanks to the proximity of the given away to Asia
landing stations for both the to mass produce.
Dogger Bank wind farm and Now we’re trying to
the new 1.4GW North Sea bring them home.”
Link Interconnector from
Norway. “Access to those
green electrons is a fantastic
proposition for us,” said
Paterson.
Flat, clean and with an
existing grid connection, it’s
also a relatively straightforward
site to develop, he added, with
few obvious impediments to the
construction of a building which,
when complete, will become one of
the UK’s largest industrial facilities.
There have been growing concerns
in recent years about the UK’s
failure to scale up battery
manufacture, not to
mention a sense of
exasperation that it was
failing to capitalise on
its historic expertise in
the field (the lithium
battery was invented in
Oxford and the battery
plant alongside
Nissan’s Sunderland
car factory was
once the first of
its kind in the
Europe).
29 June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
 energy
NOVEMBER
& environment
2019

POWER MOVES
Synchronous condensers are an old technology enjoying a new lease of life,
enabling more renewables to connect to the grid.

Andrew Wade reports

I
n terms of the disparity between a thing’s importance, and
the average person’s knowledge of how that thing works,
electricity grids must be right up there. Most people have
some grasp on how electricity is generated via various
sources, and many of us can make a decent effort to wire
a plug at the other end, but the bit in between can be
somewhat complex and a bit of a mystery, for non-engineers
at least.
In the UK, thankfully, it’s not something that troubles us
day to day, as invariably when we switch something on, it
works. However, this uninterrupted supply of electricity at
our fingertips requires a careful balancing act, maintaining a
frequency of 50Hz across the UK grid as well as stable voltage at
the various different stages of transmission, from plant to plug.
The ability to respond to fluctuations in electricity demand
quickly is known as grid inertia, a vital component of any
healthy power network. For decades, grid inertia has been
inherent in thermal generation, supplied by the rotating mass
found in the turbines and generators driven by the combustion
of fossil fuels. But as fossil generation is gradually replaced
with wind and solar energy, more and more of this grid inertia
is being lost, threatening the stability of the electricity system.
“The reason this discussion is coming up now in recent
years is based on the fact that our generation mix in our
countries is changing,” Christian Payerl, an engineer and sales
executive at industrial giant ABB, explained to The Engineer.
“The tricky thing is that when you have this solar and wind,
there is no big rotating unit…and this rotational mass that

June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk 30

was always existing – which is called inertia – is decreasing a
lot. And with that, power system operators like National Grid
have to think about how we can secure our stability and the
operation of our grid.”
The inertia from rotating generators in power stations acts
as a buffer for frequency response, providing crucial seconds
for thermal generation to flex up and down and closely match
grid demand at any given time. Another way rotating mass
provides flexibility is by delivering and absorbing reactive
power. Reactive power, sometimes referred to as phantom
power, doesn’t run or charge appliances, but it helps maintain
the right voltage across the grid, allowing active power to do
the actual work we associate with electricity. Deviations in
voltage as small as five per cent can damage the grid and even
lead to blackouts, so maintaining the right level of reactive
power in the system is absolutely vital, akin to having the right
level of pressure in a fire hose.
Integrating more solar and wind on to the grid means novel
solutions for reactive power need to be found, or in the case of
ABB’s new project, the reintroduction of an old solution. First
used on grids as far back as the 1950s, synchronous condensers
(SCs) are large rotating motors that aren’t connected to any
driven loads. Instead, they spin freely, acting somewhat like
shock absorbers for the grid, helping to maintain both grid
frequency and voltage. Their use was largely phased out due
to the evolution of power electronics, but the demands of the
21st century grid mean the old dog is being called on to perform
some new tricks.
“Synchronous condensers became a little bit out of favour
when there was more and more power electronics engaged in
the controlling of the power system,” said Payerl. “But power
electronics have problems with all the new renewables coming
in, because they cannot provide the short circuit support
(voltage) and inertia support (frequency) in the same way.”
As part of a pathfinder project with National Grid and
Norwegian renewable energy provider Statkraft, ABB is
installing a pair of synchronous condensers at Lister Drive in
Liverpool. The site will couple two 67 megavolt amps reactive
two synchronous
(MVAr) synchronous condensers with 40 tonne flywheels that
boost the available inertia by a factor of 3.5.
“When it comes to the two SCs at Lister Drive in Liverpool,
they will provide together more than 900 MWs (megawatt-
seconds) inertia,” Payerl explained. “The total maximum
system inertia today in UK is about 220GWs. So our
installation will provide about 0.5 per cent of the total
UK inertia.
“This sounds little, but be aware that this 220GWs
will reduce drastically during the coming
years and during some periods, when
there is more wind blowing, already
today the total inertia
is dropping down from
220GWs to maybe
30-40 per cent less.
And our synchronous
condensers are running
even when other power
plants switch off, because of
low energy prices on the stock market or because they will be
decommissioned and closed for good.”
ABB has deployed SCs in Australia, Canada and Scotland
to reinforce power networks in recent years, but according to
the company, the Lister Drive project is the first in the world to
include the high-inertia flywheel pairings.
“You just add on additional rotating mass,” said Payerl. “You
link, purely mechanically, some more mass to the axles of the
machines. And with that you provide more inertia to the grid.”
Another way in which the technology has evolved in the
decades since SCs were more prevalent, is in the size and
efficiency of the units themselves. The SCs of yesteryear were
proper monster machines, comparable in size to double decker
buses. The units ABB delivers today are more like mid-sized
vans – even with flywheels attached - but can still deliver
enormous punch.
“To deliver big inertia in the past you had even bigger
machines to be able to deliver this inertia,” said Payerl. “Now
you can deliver this with a relatively small machine, and a
small machine normally means lower losses…optimised for
this inertia support which National Grid is requiring.
“In our case, we say that our small machine of 70 MVA can
provide as much inertia as a 300 MVA turbo-generator. And
you can imagine the difference in losses.”
The Lister Drive project includes a 10-year service contract
between ABB and Statkraft. Given how important SCs are
likely to become for the grid in the years ahead, it’s no surprise
that this contract will see ABB provide digital condition
monitoring solutions and predictive maintenance with a view
to avoiding any unplanned downtime. A more decentralised
grid with distributed renewable generation will mean more
SCs will need to be integrated at the local level, but ultimately,
if done correctly, we’ll be left with a much more resilient
system that can better cope with the ebb and flow of wind and
solar energy.
ABB is working “I think we will see maybe a number of 30-40 units in the
with National UK for synchronous condensers,” said Payerl. “In removed
Grid to install areas, you have to have this fault current, otherwise you
cannot transfer power.”
condensers at a
site in Liverpool
31 June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
 INTERVIEW
EVENTS PL
Paul
ANNER
Stein

ENGINEERING
EVENTS/EXHIBTIONS
2021
JULY
IET Young Woman Engineer (YWE) of the Year Awards 2021
Deadline for applications: 5 July 2021
Online
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Ella Podmore, our 2020 YWE winner, is a woman smashing stereotypes,
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If you’re a woman who is working in a STEM role and smashing it, apply for the
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We also have the Gender Diversity Ambassador Award - who do you know that’s
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7 - 9 Sept 2021
NEC Birmingham
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Engineering Solutions Live

9 September 2021
British Motor Museum
www.engineeringsolutionslive.co.uk

June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk 32

 OCTOBER
The Engineer’s Collaborate to Innovate Awards
Entry deadline Sept 2021 The new size of power from HAWE Hydraulik
https://awards.theengineer.co.uk/ 14 October 2021
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The Engineer magazine’s annual search for the UK’s most innovative,
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Subcon is the UK’s premier subcontract manufacturing supply chain show. For
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33 June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk

 Manufacturing
AMRC keeps
watchmaker’s
machine tool
ticking over
W
atchmaker Loomes & Co has a three-axis
CNC machine that had been gathering dust
in a corner of its Stamford workshop, partly
due to a lack of machining knowledge in
the workforce. It was put on pause after a
previous operator left the company, leaving
only one person capable of running the machine - owner
(AMRC) engineer re-commissioned the machine
Robert Loomes.
With little spare time to commit to operating the machine,
Robert turned to the University of Sheffield AMRC for help
bringing the equipment back into service and upskilling a
new member of staff with the basics in computer-aided design
(CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) to allow
in-house production of prototypes and parts for the company’s
entirely British-made watches.
Emma Parkin, a project engineer at the AMRC Machining
Group, stepped in to help. She made several visits to Loomes
& Co, undertaking a number of problem-solving exercises to
address issues with existing equipment such as on-machine
microscopes, CAD/CAM software and machine set up. She
also carried out programming and discussed best practices
regarding fixturing, tool selection, cutting strategies
and general machine health.
Emma said: “Loomes & Co is a British
watchmaker that produces an entirely
‘made in the UK’ range of watches - every
component in the watch is British-made - and the
majority of the watch movement is made in-house at
Loomes & Co on a three-axis machine tool.
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
NOVEMBERtechnology
2019
A once dormant milling machine is back in
action producing parts for luxury British-
made timepieces after a University of Sheffield
Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre
tool and trained staff how to use it.
“This machine had been out of commission for nearly two
years due to lack of machine knowledge within the workforce.
We were asked to re-commission the machine, service it and
train the new staff with the basics of how to use the machine
tool so they could produce further watch components.”
Emma’s work has led to an improved machining process;
knowledge of basic machining practices; skills development
including design software; redesigned fixtures; and sample
part production. Loomes said that what was delivered in a few
days by Emma and the AMRC would have taken his company
‘years of practice and experimentation’ to achieve, and
has helped boost productivity and spur innovation.
“This level of improved precision and
cleanliness means we can work faster and
crisper,” he said. “It means we can get from an
idea to a finished product much quicker than we
ever could before, and that we can afford to take
more risks and have the freedom to be more agile
and develop more quickly.
34
 Every component
of the Loomes watch
(pictured below)
is designed and
produced at the
company’s workshop
in Lincolnshire (left)
The company is based in a former gaol house th
dates back to 1588 and is spread over four floors. It
workshops are a showcase of horological expertis
and its watchmaking ancestry can be traced back
Thomas Loomes who, in the 1650s, ran London’s la g
firm of clock and watchmakers. The firm only bega
making watches in 2008 but has enjoyed global acc
in that time, gracing the pages of publications like GQ
magazine and the New York Times.
“It is a fascinating place to visit,” said Emma, “it
stepping into another world. The Loomes Original watch is
an entirely in-house made movement, every component has
been designed and made by them. As an engineer I specialise
in micro-machining so it was amazing to be able to go to the
workshop and see for myself a watch movement that has been
entirely developed, manufactured and built in Britain.”
Robert said Emma’s enthusiasm, expertise and knowledge
in commercial machining delivered fast results - upskilling the
workforce and halving machining time for some operations.
“She very quickly helped a new member of staff to get used
to the software and machinery that we are using and delivered
an awful lot of information in a very short space of time to that
new member of staff.
“She also helped us to understand how we could make
things better; to do things as well as we could and as quickly
as we could. She cut down some of our machining times
massively - there were some components that were taking us
about three hours to make and Emma helped us to work out
how to use the optimum speeds and feeds for the materials we
were working with to get sharp, crisp results much quicker.
For some of the operations we have almost halved the time it
takes to do them.
The project was paid for using funds from the High Value
Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult as part of its commitment to
supporting the UK’s smaller and medium-sized enterprises.
35
Watchmaker clocks opportunity to innovate and grow
Growing up in a family business steeped in horology, Robert Loomes was
surrounded by clocks and watches and by tales of namesake Thomas
Loomes, the eminent 17th century horologist who ran London’s largest
firm of clock and watchmakers.
With a background predominantly in repair and restoration, Robert, who
served a traditional apprenticeship under his father Brian Loomes before
taking up the reins to follow in his father’s footsteps, was convinced
it was possible to design, sketch and manufacture every component
required to create an English watch.
Despite being told it was an impossible task, Robert set about creating a
workshop and a team of watchmakers who could produce a watch from
s der one roof. Each component is carefully sketched by hand,
f rting the meticulous process of turning a sketch into machined
ts.
a firm of repairs and restorers. I grew up in the family business
clockmaking and about 15 years ago I made a couple of
es myself, partly to tease a customer who had brought in a
watch which he had paid £15,000 for. I gently pulled his leg
I could make something like that for a fraction of the price
t what he had bought was an awful lot of marketing and a little
f watch. He said ‘don’t be ridiculous you can’t do that’ and I did it
ove a point really.
ade a pair of watches, one for me and one for him. When he
s them he said we shouldn’t be repairing watches, but that
h ld be making them. So we started, very tentatively, making
h we imported bits and pieces - cases, dials, hands - built them
er and we had made a watch. It wasn’t overly difficult.”
h any sold a lot of watches in a short space of time and the
b got noticeably bigger. It moved premises, brought in new staff
d b t’s partner Robina Hill took over as managing director, leaving
h f pursue research and development.
kly after taking over, Robina said that it’s not enough to make
watches, as other people make watches, and what we needed to do
was to make British watches. She was told it was impossible to build an
entirely British-made watch but we knew we had the machinery, and we
knew we had the skills.
“We produced the first ones really quickly in about two years; that was
from the original germ of an idea to very old fashioned drawings on
graph paper and making a prototype, to producing the final watch.”
But Robert had a problem: “All of the machinery we had was manual and
we needed a decent CNC milling machine to make smaller components
ourselves rather than permanently farming out to other workshops
around us. It becomes expensive having to outsource almost every
component to someone else.”
So the company built its own bespoke kit using a cheap milling machine,
stripping it down and rebuilding it to meet their own specifications. It’s
by no means of a commercial machine standard that can be run six days
a week, 15 hours a day but Robert says for them, the speed of producing
components is not as important as accuracy - so running a little slower
isn’t an issue.
At less than £90,000 to build and set up, the bespoke machine cost
a fraction of the price compared with buying a high-end, commercial
machine which would have been in the region of £600,000.
After being used to make prototype parts, the CNC machine was put
on pause for a few years but Robert was keen to bring it back into use
and approached the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing
Research Centre (AMRC) for help re-commissioning the machine and
giving staff the skills needed to operate it.
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk

THE DIGITAL TWIN –
WHAT, WHY AND HOW?
During a recent online panel discussion, experts from Babcock International, Rolls-
Royce, Cranfield University, Strathclyde University and the Digital Catapult shared
their thoughts on the challenges and benefits of deploying digital twin technology
F
rom smart buildings and jet
engines, to warships and even
entire factories the ability
to create a real-time digital
representation of an asset
– a so called digital twin – is
already revolutionising many areas of
technology.
Earlier this year, in partnership
with the engineering giant Babcock
International Group, The Engineer
brought together a panel of experts
to explore this concept in more
detail, consider examples of the
digital twin in action and discuss
some of the challenges and benefits
of implementing and maintaining a
digital twin
The following report examines some
of the key topics explored during this
discussion
Setting the scene
Opening the session, Babcock
technology chief Dr Jon Hall explained
that digital twins are of growing
importance to Babcock, and key to
optimising the performance and
availability of the range of complex,
expensive assets it manages. “Digital
twins and digital technologies have
implications across all the areas
Babcock works in,” he said. “It affects
how we collaborate with customers and
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
NOVEMBER
Panel Session
2019 report
can be used to transform the way in
which big complex assets are built
and supported.”
Hall added that whilst the
deployment of digital processes is
increasingly baked in at the start
of new projects, digital twinning
is also key to extracting improved
performance from existing assets.
“There’s so much more we can do to
exploit existing capability, he said, “it’s
not just about applying these tools and
techniques to shiny new assets but also
legacy assets.”
For Hall, the key benefit of the
approach is “clarity”; the way in which
it enables all stakeholders – from
members of the supply chain through
to end customers - to access a
shared view and make informed,
dynamic decisions. “There’s a
huge opportunity that comes
from clarity,” he said. “Whether
it’s a service delivery model (for
example, looking after aircraft
carriers or a fleet of jet aircraft)
or in a build program, pulling a
shared view of the state an asset and
the enterprise that surround it is so
powerful”.
Turning to the some of the key
challenges of introducing and deploying
digital twins, Hall said that it’s really
about balancing an appetite for new
36
technology, with an appreciation
that if you’re going to truly tap
into its benefits you need to work
hard to ensure that stakeholders
share a common platform and
approach. Babcock supports such
a broad range of range of assets that
ensuring a common approach and
implementing digital twins at scale and
pace is a major challenge, he said.
Dr Jon Hall,
Chief Innovation Applying the digital twin
and Technology Following Hall’s scene-setting,
Officer, Babcock
Babcock’s Head of Data & Analytics,
International Group
Steve Penver drilled down into more
detail on exactly how the organisation
goes about applying digital twins.
“The starting position is to create
a digital back-bone and create that
common technology enablement
level that gives us connectivity to
the assets, interoperability to the
customers and the supply chain,”
he said. “This is absolutely key to
bringing a digital twin to life”
The next step, he explained, is to
establish a clear understanding of the
performance questions that need to be
answered. “That drives us to what is the
Steve Penver, data that informs those decisions, and
Head of Data & how can we digitise the asset to ensure
Analytics, Babcock that we’re collecting the right data.”
International Group Developing a digital twin of an asset
like a warship is clearly a complex

process, and to address this challenge
Babcock takes a systems to system
approach.
“We model the individual systems,
which breaks down the complexity of
trying to do it all in one go,” he said. “By
integrating those different system level
twins we can get an aggregated model of
the platform itself. This is how we can
build up complexity and understand
the interaction of the systems and how
they affect performance of the overall
platform”
Turning to the benefits of digital
twinning, Penver referenced Babcock’s
work on the Type 23 frigate. “We’ve
seen a massive reduction in inventory
spares on board and in holding as well as
implementing design changes to some
of the individual systems. This is really
getting us towards insight of how the
asset is performing in real life and how
we can model expected performance.”
The Future is now
Echoing Penver’s remarks on the here
and now benefits of digital twinning,
Rolls-Royce’s head of innovation Alistair
Sponsored by
Donaldson, began by stressing that Donaldson said that it’s important
digital twinning has become an absolute to recognise that, rather than an
imperative for many major projects Alistair Donaldson, individual thing, the digital twin is a
and that expertise in the area is vital if
Transformation collection of technologies “born out of
Executive – Head
organisations are to “get a seat at the the maturing of our digital enterprise.”
of Innovation and
table and contract for these pieces of In recent years, advances in design,
new Product Design,
work.” Rolls-Royce Plc. test, simulation and production
Turning to the core technology, technologies and the emergence of
industry 4.0 have, he said, “created the
data supply chain enabling the creation
of digital twins.”
Meet the panel Donaldson then outlined a model
for a Digital twin hierarchy designed
Dr Jon Hall – Chief Innovation and Technology Officer, Babcock
International Group to be applied across all sectors. This
model outlines different types of twin,
Steve Penver – Head of Data & Analytics, Babcock International from component level twins through to
Group program level twins and shows how the
value lies in bringing all of these twins
Prof John Erkoyuncu – School of Aerospace, Transport and
together.
Manufacturing, Cranfield University
What’s needed now, he said, is a
Dr Nick Wright – Head of Manufacturing Industries, Digital national digital twin program, that will
Catapult help establish a common framework to
enable organisations across industry to
Dr Chris Wallace – Knowledge Exchange Fellow, University of
exploit the benefits of the technology.
Strathclyde
“There will become an important need
Alistair Donaldson – Transformation Executive – Head of for standards, the ability to plug this
Innovation and new Product Design, Rolls-Royce Plc. whole opportunity together and really
drive that prosperity agenda.”
37 June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk

The practicalities of digital twinning
Our next panelist, Dr Nick Wright,
head of manufacturing industries at
Digital Catapult got back to basics,
and turned to a topic which he said
is often forgotten about in the digital
twin debate: the infrastructure used to
create the coupling between an asset
and the digital world. “As part of making
these things real that acquisition of
high quality secure data between
your physical asset and your virtual
representation is absolutely key,”
he said.
The process of introducing this
coupling is, said Wright, becoming
more straightforward thanks to the
emergence of improved wireless
connectivity technologies, in particular
5G. “Until recently wireless technologies
have not had the maturity around
security, performance, flexibility and
price that makes them accessible….. but
some of the technologies now coming
along are much more affordable, much
more flexible and much more secure
than they ever have been and that is the
key to us scaling some of these solutions
and making the most impact,” he said.
He explained that Digital Catapult
is now involved in a number of projects
aimed at exploring the manufacturing
potential of next-generation wireless
technologies, including a project led by
AMRC and involving BAE systems that is
building an industrial grade 5G network
across three sites in NW England.
I BELIEVE IN PUTTING THE DIGITAL TWIN AT THE HEART OF ANY
DIGITAL SOLUTION DR JON HALL, BABCOCK
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
Panel
NOVEMBER
Session 2019
report
This initiative is exploring the
development of a number of digital twin
demonstrators including a real time
monitoring and adaptive closed loop
control system that’s being used to take
data from manufacturing processes,
compare this data to simulation models
and then adapt the machining process
in real time in order to improve
performance.
Wright said that the team is
also looking at things like simple
supervisory models for factory
ecosystem monitoring (which
could for instance be used to
optimise energy usage in HVAC
systems) and at how digital twins
can be used to optimise the supply
chain. “We’re looking at how goods get
moved between different tiers within
supply chains,” he said. “How do we
measure that, understand it, model and
optimise it and improve it for future
resilience of those supply chains.
Integrating data and building resilience
After Wright’s exploration of how digital
twins can be applied in the short term
Cranfield’s Prof John Erkoyuncu
turned to some of the fundamental
research that will shape the
technology in the years ahead.
He began by talking about
some of the work that his team
has been doing on data integration,
explaining that the research has
centred on efforts to build dynamic
38
relationships between the data source
Dr Nick and the software. To achieve this, the
Wright, Head of team has developed an ontology based
Manufacturing process aimed at understanding the
Industries, Digital asset, characterizing the changes in the
Catapult asset and then feed that information
into the database.
Erkoyuncu gave a couple of
compelling experimental examples
of this process in practice that
demonstrated how it’s possible to
automate the flow of data based
on changes to an asset and then
reflect those change in the digital
twin -
Another key area for
Erkoyuncu’s team is digital twin
resilience, i.e. ensuring that the digital
twin remains accurate over time.
Prof John Various different scenarios could,
Erkoyuncu, School of he said, cause digital twins to become
Aerospace, Transport less accurate over time, so his team
and Manufacturing, has been exploring the use of machine
Cranfield University learning tools to detect these anomalies
and get the twin running as effectively
as possible as quickly as possible. “We
wanted to develop a machine learning
based approach where we can learn
from these disruptions and reduce
the time it takes to detect these
anomalies and recover to an
appropriate level of accuracy,” he
explained.
Digital twins in civil nuclear
Our final panelist, Strathclyde’s Dr
Chris Wallace focused on a specific
application area for digital twins: the
Dr Chris Wallace, civil nuclear sector, and explored some
Knowledge Exchange
Fellow, University of
of the advantages and challenges of
retrofitting digital twins to legacy
Strathclyde equipment.

Wallace explained that the focus
of his group’s digital twin activity has
been around some of the monitoring,
prognostics and inspection processes
that are at the heart of the nuclear
sector’s asset management strategy.
“Using digital twin models to simulate
future asset operation, and understand
the potential impact of scheduled
outages and maintenance procedures
has huge potential in terms of asset
management,” he said. A key attraction,
he added, is that digital twins can
be used to provide insight into the
operation of a physical of a physical
asset that’s not otherwise possible.
“Nobody want to build a duplicate
nuclear power station to monitor their
existing nuclear power stations,” he
said, “digital twins fit the bill for that.”
Wallace explained that lots of the
work his team does is focused on
the component level rather than the
entire asset level. “A nuclear power
station is a complicated asset,” he said,
“with complex operation modes, and
degradation mechanisms that vary from
component to component, and lifecycles
that may be 10, 20 or even 30 years. This
seems to be the logical integration point
for what people are calling digital twins.
Echoing a point made by other
panelists Wallace added that one of the
key challenges the group has started to
come up against is the sheer volume of
data that it is now possible to collect.
“Given the cheap nature of computing
power, and the availability of cheap
sensors you can collect lots of data,
build useful models and do analysis but
at a certain point you start to experience
challenges around scale.”
Sponsored by
Q&A
The session concluded with a Q&A from the viewers, here are some of the key questions
When building a digital twin of an asset how do you decide which dynamic to mimic and which to leave out?
JH: “The art is in leaving all the stuff out that you can get away with leaving out. Don’t try and gather data on everything
unless you think you really need it. What outcomes do you want? Do you want to save fuel in the engine, do you want
greater availability of some mission systems, or power output from the reactor? That’s got to guide you towards the places
where you think you need the data to be captured and the modeling to take place.
If you were to start from scratch what would be the key aspects needed to provide a robust foundation for
setting up a digital twin?
NW: There’s not easy place to start. It’s not about the technology at all, it’s about focusing on the outcomes you’re looking to
achieve by going for a digital twin. It’s really easy to get swallowed up in wanting to go and buy bits of tech, but for me it’s
about establishing the outcomes you want to achieve and then the business case will come from those outcomes.
What is the main benefit of a digital twin?
SP: For us it’s very much around availability, maintaining availability, getting the best performance out of the assets, getting
toward things like condition-based monitoring, and being able to predict potential failure.
NW: Often the thing that most people want to focus on is the financial reward, but there are other things as well. Companies
investing in these technologies will naturally get transferrable digital skills through working with the technologies, and the
sustainability agenda is absolute crucial as part of the business case for most of the industries we work in.
JE: Digital twins have a really important role to play in improving efficiency and effectiveness and this clearly has implications
in terms of growing sustainability, minimising waste and reducing the costs that you experience across the supply chain.
Are digital twins applicable to smaller organisations and SMEs?
AD: This data needs to start within the supply to be able to be consumed and aggregated up into these products. There are lots
of ways that can happen and lots of the things we’ve been talking about are transferrable to smaller organisations, This
doesn’t need to be incredibly expensive blue chip enterprise level investment.
NW: The university of Cambridge Institute for manufacturing are running a program called digital manufacturing on a
shoestring. That’s a really good program to get engaged with in terms of building up knowledge and capability. In terms of
support there is MadeSmarter, the UK’s program and initiative around industry 4.0, there are opportunities for funding and
support around and a library of technology solutions that have been developed for the SME community in this space.
What role can organisations like Babcock play to encourage the supply chain to embrace digital twinning?
JH: “There are two routes – a direct route which a number of companies do which is the supply chain excellence route of
helping. What seems even more powerful is collaborative efforts. For example there’s an SME working group which helps
the interface between defence primes and SMEs, and there are multiple organisations like TEAM Defence information.
Those are opportunities for companies of all scales and sizes to get insight on digital technologies and digital twins. It’s a
very democratic environment to come and participate and fin things out.
What are the skills implications around digital twinning?
JE: We recently ran a workshop looking at what are the skills needed around digital What was interesting was that we started
off by the ability to justify the need for the technology. The other thing that came out is we need people that can cut across
different kinds of skills and have awareness of things like programming and the importance of data. We also looked at how
models and different types of modelling processes can contribute to decision making. The future digital person will cut
across these different disciplines – we’re moving much more towards a person that has a system view and an awareness
of all of these different challenges rather than just being an engineer in a particular application area.
39 June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
 NOVEMBER
Sci-fi e ye
2019

E
arlier this spring, with the mining installations with meteoric
maiden flight of NASA’s bombardment from on high…
Ingenuity, we celebrated Air travel shrank the Earth.
one of the most significant Instead of spending months sailing
engineering milestones of to Australia, it is now possible
recent times. Despite having to get there in a matter of a day
to contend with lower gravity and or two. The same will be true of
a thinner atmosphere, an aircraft Mars. If we build the right aircraft,
flew on Mars for the first time. It gareth L. POWELL we’ll be able to go anywhere on

Herders
was the first powered, controlled the planet—and don’t forget how
flight of a human-built vehicle on much smaller Mars is already.
another planet—a significance Where Earth’s diameter is 7,926

celebrated by the onboard inclusion
of a tiny scrap of material from the
Wright brothers’ first flyer.
The Ingenuity flights were
relatively modest in duration, but
they were a proof of concept. What
comes next will be interesting.
The Wright brothers’ first hop
was shorter in length than the
wingspan of the Boeing 747, which
first took to the skies only sixty-six
years after Kitty Hawk. Who knows
what we could have flying through
the Martian clouds sixty-six years
from now?
The first thought I have is of
a massive blimp carrying several
dozen of these helicopters. Being
solar powered, there’s little reason
it can’t stay aloft for days, weeks,
maybe even years. Every time
the scientists on Earth identify
a location of potential interest,
the blimp dispatches a helicopter
to investigate, soaring over any
intervening rough terrain with
more ease and speed than a rover.
A helicopter has the potential
to get up-close and personal with
the strata in a cliff face—something
that’s obviously difficult for a
ground-based vehicle. A fleet of
them could traverse and map the
length of the great Valles Marineras
canyons without worrying about
of Mars
Following the inaugural flight of NASA’s Ingenuity,
science fiction writer Gareth L. Powell considers the
future of powered flight on other planets
the bumpy topography.
But why stop with an
automated blimp? Viewers of
The Martian will remember
long sequences of Matt Damon
bouncing around in a rover
for weeks as he treks towards
salvation. But what if he’d been
able to jump in a helicopter and
fly there in a day? When humans
start building bases on Mars,
helicopters would be as valuable
to them as they are for bases in the
Arctic and Antarctica. They could
be used to airlift personnel to areas
of potential interest identified
via satellite survey. They could
fly missions to resupply forward
outposts, and rescue explorers
stranded by injury or technical
malfunction. They could even—
god forbid—be used for security
and defence.
Science fiction writers get
a lot of mileage from imagining
worst-case scenarios. We find
drama in the idea of things going
wrong. So, while I hope that in the
near future we as a species will
outgrow our childish infatuation
with war, Mars is an entire planet
filled with currently unclaimed
resources and territory. A bright
red jewel hanging just within our
reach. Can our acquisitive monkey
natures resist squabbling over such
a prize? Only 15 years after Wilbur
and Orville showed powered flight
was possible, squadrons of biplanes
were dogfighting in the war-torn
skies over France. So, now I’m
imagining a drone war on Mars,
fought remotely by competing
governments or corporations,
each vying for control of profitable
ore deposits or water sources.
Helicopter gunships whispering
through the thin air, hunting for
enemy rovers. Mass accelerators
on Phobos and Deimos wiping out
miles, the diameter of Mars is only
4,220 miles. So, while the technical
challenges are huge, the distances
are shorter and the gravity is
lighter.
But why stop there? Now we
know we can engineer machines
able to fly in different gravities and
through different atmospheric
compositions, we should be
building choppers capable of
exploring the cloud tops of Venus.
Huge machines with rotors the
size of wind turbines could track
the storm systems in Jupiter’s
atmosphere, or cruise the ochre
skies of Titan seeking life in its
hydrocarbon lakes.
However, I’m going to end
this month’s column with a
truly science fictional image.
Imagine, if you will, a Mars in
the not too distant future, where
a combination of terraforming
techniques have thickened the
atmosphere enough for hardy
plants to grow and specially
adapted animals to roam the
surface. And on this new tundra,
shaggy herds of reindeer and
buffalo graze the tough, wiry grass,
watched over by autonomous
helicopter shepherds, while
overhead, two moons shine in the
afternoon sky.

Image of NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter hovering above the Martian surface taken by the perseverence rover. Image: NASA

June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk 40

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LAST MAN ON THE MOON
Astronaut, fighter pilot, naval aviator, electrical and aeronautical engineer,
as commander of the Apollo 17 mission Gene Cernan became the last person to
leave footprints on the Moon.
C
aptain in the U.S. Navy,
Gene Cernan left his
mark on the history of
exploration by flying three
times in space, twice to
the Moon. The second
American to walk in space
and the last human of only 12 to leave
his footprints on the lunar surface,
Cernan is one of the great unsung
heroes of the Apollo program phase
of the Space Age. He went into space
as pilot on the Gemini 9A mission, as
lunar module pilot on Apollo 10 and as
commander of Apollo 17, the final Apollo
lunar landing. Cernan passionately
believed that this era of extra-terrestrial
travel was so far ahead of its time that
that it would take a further “hundred
years in the history of mankind before
we look back and really understand the
meaning of Apollo.” Speaking towards
the end of his life, Cernan maintained
that the technology and vision of such
explorations were so ground-breaking
that it was as if the great American
President John F Kennedy had, “reached
out into the twenty-first century where
we are today, grabbed hold of a decade
of time, slipped it neatly into the sixties
and seventies and called it Apollo.”
Eugene Andrew Cernan was born in
Chicago, Illinois on 14th March 1934. Son
of Rose and Andrew Cernan – both of
eastern European origins – he grew up
in the towns of Bellwood and Maywood
where he attended elementary school
and was a Boy Scout. He read electrical
engineering at Purdue University
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
L ate, great engineers
GENE CERNAN:
Writ ten BY Nick Smith
Gene Cernan 1934-2017
(which was also attended by the first person to walk on the
Moon, Neil Armstrong), where he attained his bachelor’s
degree in 1956. In the same year he was commissioned into
the U.S. Navy, where Cernan would log more than 5,000 hours
of flying time, including 4,800 hours in jet aircraft (as well as
at least 200 successful landings on aircraft carriers). In 1963
he earned a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering at
the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California.
Later that year he was among the 14 people selected (from 720
applicants) to form NASA Astronaut Group 3, ten of which
would fly in Apollo missions, with four becoming ‘Moon
walkers.’ Selection required the astronauts to be American
citizens under the age of 34, standing no more than 6 feet in
height, with more than 1,000 hours flying time as a test pilot,
and a degree in engineering or the physical sciences. Four died
in training accidents before they could go into space.
For Cernan’s first mission, he and Thomas P. Stafford were
launched into space on 3rd June 1966 in Gemini 9A, during
42
which he became the second American
to walk in space, undertaking more
than two hours of extravehicular
activity (EVA) in what proved to be a
dangerously faulty space suit. During
the three-day mission, Gemini 9A
rendezvoused three times with a target
vehicle, simulating procedures that
would be used in the Apollo 10 mission.
As well as the EVA and rendezvous
objectives, Gemini 9A carried out several
scientific experiments, including one
that assessed astronaut stress levels
by measuring the intake and output of
fluids before, during and after the flight.
Three years later, Apollo 10 was
NASA’s ‘dress rehearsal’ for one of the
most important voyages of discovery
that humankind has ever undertaken:
the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing. It was
the first comprehensive lunar-orbital
qualification and verification test of the
lunar lander. The mission confirmed the
performance, stability and reliability of
the Apollo command, service and lunar
modules (Cernan was the pilot of lunar
module Snoopy, named after the Peanuts
cartoon beagle). The mission included a
descent to within eight nautical miles of
the Moon’s surface.
If Cernan’s contribution to
that moment in history has been
overshadowed by the achievements
of Apollo 11’s ‘Holy Trinity’ crew, it’s
not through any lack of good-natured
self-promotion. In a 2007 interview
for NASA’s oral histories, Cernan said:
“I keep telling Neil Armstrong that we
painted that white line in the sky all the
 Read more
of our Late, Great Engineers at
www.theengineer.co.uk

Supported by

way to the Moon down to 47,000 feet so

he wouldn’t get lost, and all he had to do
was land. Made it sort of easy for him.”
In fact, the mission performed every
function necessary for a lunar landing
(apart from the actual landing itself) and
it was the final test of Apollo’s systems.
On his return to Earth, to increase his
chances of getting to command his
own mission, Cernan turned down the
position of lunar module pilot on Apollo
16. He was duly returned to NASA’s
program selection rotation, where he
was placed as back up commander on
Apollo 14.
It wasn’t to be until December 1972
that Cernan finally got his shot at
getting his own ‘boots on the Moon’
as commander of Apollo17, the last
piloted lunar expedition that explored
the Taurus-Littrow region of the Moon,
collecting 115kg of rocks and other
We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall
surface material for study. Recalling return, with peace and hope for all mankind.
his attitude to the technology he’d
Eugene Cernan (1934-2017)
helped to develop as far back as the
Gemini program, Cernan explained his
preference for manual navigational
control: “There’s no way I’m going to that had probably emerged from a surface vent. both on and off site at Johnson Space
go all the way to the Moon”, he said, Shortly before preparing to go back into the lunar Center. In 1999 Cernan co-wrote The Last
“particularly for a second time, and let module, Cernan drove the lunar rover a mile away so that Man on the Moon. A documentary film of
a computer land me on the Moon. The the video camera could record the mission’s departure. In his the same name was released in 2014.
arrogance of a pilot, particularly naval autobiography The Last Man on the Moon, he explains how Shortly after his death in 2017,
aviators, is too great to allow that to he knelt and wrote his daughter Tracy’s initials – TDC – in the Cernan’s family released a statement
happen.” Cernan and lunar module pilot dust. All that remained for Apollo 17’s crew to do was to start confirming that the honour of leaving
Harrison Schmitt touched down safely the long journey home. We remember Armstrong’s first words the last footprints on the Moon was seen
to perform a total of three spacewalks on the Moon, and yet the last words spoken there are just as by the great astronaut as a dubious one:
while on the surface, scaling mountains powerful and evocative. As Cernan waited to climb the ladder “Gene was passionate about sharing
and collecting data about the history up to the module for the final time, he paused and said: “As I his desire to see the continued human
and geology of the Moon that would take man’s last step from the surface, back home for some time exploration of space and encouraged
inform planetary science for years. to come – but we believe not too long into the future – I’d like our nation’s leaders and young people
With 22 hours and 6 minutes outside, to just [say] what I believe history will record. That America’s to not let him remain the last man to
the astronauts established a record challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. And, walk on the Moon.” A legend of space
for longest extravehicular activity as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came exploration, Cernan died at the age of
by one mission on the surface of the and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all 82 on 16th January 2017, and was buried
Moon. Meanwhile, command module mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.” with full military honours at Texas State
pilot Ron Evans set a record for most Cernan later assisted with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project Cemetery.
time orbiting the Moon. The mission’s (completed in July 1975) before retiring from both space
biggest discovery came when Schmitt exploration and the navy to start his own company – the
exclaimed that he had discovered orange Cernan Corporation – that pursued management and The IET is celebrating incredible people who
regolith on the grey surface. Cernan consultant interests in the energy, aerospace and other related have made an impact in engineering
recalled thinking that his crewmate industries. He became a familiar face in the media as co- and technology. Vote for your pioneer
had ‘overdosed on rocks,’ but examined anchorman on ABC-TV’s broadcast coverage of the first three or groundbreaker today at
the specimen despite his doubts. The Space Shuttle launches. He also became Chairman of the Board theiet.org/celebrating-
deposits were confirmed orange and of Johnson Engineering Corporation that provided NASA with impact
subsequently found to be volcanic glass Flight Crew Systems Development, with personnel located

43 June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk

 ARCHIVE FEATURE

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June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk 44

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June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk 46

 Investing where it counts

Targeting net zero

Over the last 15 years, we’ve worked with the UK’s Ministry of
Defence to reduce carbon emissions at Portsmouth Naval Base by
65%. We’ve introduced electric vehicles, improved the infrastructure,
reduced energy usage, and created sustainable generation and
storage solutions to supply shore power to the Royal Navy’s
aircraft carriers.
Our target is to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions across
our operations by 2030.

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T
he pandemic has shone
a light on a whole host
of inequalities, the most
obvious being health.
Wealth inequalities are also
more apparent especially
in some new areas - who can afford
to self-isolate or work in frontline
shift jobs that don’t provide sick
pay? Another inequality much
more visible since the pandemic
started is the digital divide.
Schools and teachers have had
to step-up their digital offering
during lockdowns to ensure pupils
can learn from home, but we
know that digital access continues
to be a barrier. With many
disadvantaged pupils struggling
to afford hardware and data. In
addition, superfast broadband is
still limited in many – often rural –
areas of the country.
Another casualty of digital
inequality can be access to careers
information, advice and guidance,
which already had patchy
provision. Many students from
disadvantaged backgrounds miss
out on social capital their peers
might have at home and digital
barriers to online quality careers
guidance can be another blow to
their life chances.
Our latest report ‘Securing the
future’, co-authored with a number
of partners, found that almost
half of 200 teachers surveyed
said that some of their pupils had
not been able to access online or
virtual careers provision due to a
lack of technology or internet at
home. And schools with a higher
percentage of pupils eligible for
free school meals (FSM) were
more likely to say that a lack
technology or internet at home
was a barrier to participating in
careers provision – nearly 70%
compared to 36% of schools with
below average FSM - highlighting
the impact of the digital divide.
Why is careers provision
important? Improving young
people’s knowledge of engineering,
the breadth and availability of
careers it offers, and the pay they
June 2021 / www.theengineer.co.uk
NOVEMBER
Comment2019
Dr Hilary Leevers
Overcoming the digital
divide to inspire future
engineers
EngineeringUK CEO Dr Hilary Leevers writes about
how the digital divide has impacted careers
provision in schools.
can expect, is key to attracting
more, and a more diverse group
of, young people into engineering
careers, opening up these careers
to young people who would not
otherwise have seen themselves
taking that route. Research
conducted by EngineeringUK
clearly shows that young people
who know more about what
engineers do are more likely to
perceive the profession in a positive
way and to consider a career in
engineering – in fact, young people
attending a STEM careers activity
were over 3 times as likely to
consider a career in engineering
than those who had not.
We can create a win-win
situation if more young people
48
from all walks of life could be part
of the engineering workforce. As
well as filling skills gaps, a diverse
workforce is better placed to
solve the challenges of the future
because it has more creativity and
less group think.
Over the last year,
EngineeringUK has moved lots
of our engagement online – for
example, the Big Bang Digital has
replaced our usual in-person Fair,
this and last year. Many others
have done the same and we’ve
adapted Neon, our platform that
helps teachers find engineering
experiences and inspiring careers
resources, to include online
activities. We’ve also worked in
partnership with The Careers &
Enterprise Company to develop
a new website that draws on
the learnings of our Corporate
Members in the design, delivery
and implementation of virtual
work experience.
But we don’t yet know how
effective virtual experiences are
and how they compare with their
in-person counterparts. I’m a big
fan of measuring impact, and
we’ll be looking at what sorts of
audiences we reach digitally, and
how different groups of young
people are affected by their
experiences. We should make
no assumptions about what will
work to engage a young person
and excite them in the potential of
engineering. My hunch is that we
will end up with a greater range
of online activity than before the
pandemic, alongside reintroduced
in-person experiences. However,
whatever the effectiveness of
digital engagement, we must
make sure that we have in-person
alternatives until the digital divide
is eliminated.
The Institution of Engineering
and Technology and Digital
Access for All have drawn together
many organisations to form the
Digital Poverty Alliance to try
and coordinate various efforts
to ameliorate the digital divide
with an aim to end digital poverty,
especially for children, over the
next 5-10 years. Alongside these
sector-led efforts, we’re calling
on the government to urgently
develop a fully funded digital
learning strategy for schools. The
first step needs to be to close the
digital divide so that no young
person is left behind. The second
is for the government to look
at how schools are supported
Studio Romantic - stock.adobe.com
to integrate a digital approach
into their everyday activities. In
the long run, we hope that this
approach will help overcome
the current patchiness of STEM
careers provision in schools,
giving more young people the
opportunity to be inspired by a
career in engineering.
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