TECHNOLOGY CENTRES
BIOMETHANE GAS FUELS TO REDUCE FLEET TRANSPORT COSTS CONSIDERABLY
There will be a substantial migration to gaseous fuelled vehicles in Ireland in the next 15–24 months, according to director of the Technology Centre for Biorefining and Bioenergy (TCBB) Bart Bonsall.
The centre is currently working on a project called Transgas, which is focused on the utilisation of organic waste to produce biomethane gas fuels that will displace diesel and petrol as transport fuel.
L–R: Catherine Walsh, Victor Acines, Alan Hynes and Eilis McGrath, all from CCAN
“As well as reducing the cost, these fuels are more environmentally friendly and offer a way for Ireland to use agri-food and organic waste to generate something that can displace petroleum-based fuels, which we now import 100pc of.
BREAKTHROUGH X-RAY POLYMER DEVELOPED AT CCAN
A recent project completed at the Collaborative Centre for Applied Nanotechnology (CCAN) brought a large medical device company in Galway together with a speciality polymer manufacturer in the Midlands to produce a breakthrough x-ray opaque polymer for use in medical devices.
“This means that when the device goes into the body it is made of polymer rather than metal, which is more biocompatible and cheaper to visualise,” explains centre director Dr Alan Hughes.
With offices at Tyndall National Institute in Cork and Crann at Trinity College Dublin, CCAN was set up to make it easier for Irish-based companies to access the advanced materials and nanotech expertise that’s around the country.
“On behalf of our member companies we can access researchers from right across the country all under one prearranged agreement so avoiding all of the intellectual property headaches that are normally involved,” notes Hughes.
“Our focus is on developing materials that go into advanced products. We have two major sectors – life sciences and electronics.”
CCAN currently has 16 member companies, 10 of which are SMEs.
“The way we operate is to target a need of one of the end-user companies, assemble a mini supply chain around that and fund the development of a new material or property to hand over to companies to commercialise through the established supply chain,” says Hughes.
“At TCBB we are developing the fleet technologies that can use such fuels and the regulatory framework so they can be used efficiently, but most importantly the anaerobic digestion technologies that can take various waste water streams, agri-food waste streams and municipal waste streams and convert them into the bio gas that fuels these vehicles.”
Cars fuelled by biomethane gas fuels are already available in passenger models, but Bonsall believes the greatest interest lies with large fleet vehicles. “A dairy fleet for example serviced from a central location could save 25–30pc of transport costs by adapting waste streams for transport fuels,” he says.
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L–R: Noel Gavigan, Owenroe Lemass and Padraic O hUiginn, all from TCBB
Issue 7 Autumn/Winter 2013 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW 15
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