ATETA

ATETA worked with ReSolar to provide them with a comprehensive literature review of industry testing standards for photovoltaics, as well as devising a solution to get the highest possible output from a chain of variable performance solar panels.

"ATETA provided regular updates with the progress of the project and produced their report for us quickly. The report they’ve created for us has been invaluable and provides a useful, tailored source of research we can refer back to. As a small business, our time is invaluable to us. Working with ATETA allowed us to focus on our business and the research they provided helped us to advance much faster than we would have done alone. Through ATETA, we’ve made many valuable contacts within industry and academia. If we have a problem they’ve been able to help or signpost us to someone who can. I wish I’d worked with them sooner! I’d definitely recommend ATETA to other small businesses."

Matt Burnell, Director at ReSolar

ATETA worked with Gen2Carbon to validate a concept through practical experimentation trials.

"ATETA was great to work with and gave us the validation we needed to move our concept forward. They gave us confidence that our solution would work by providing access to resources and testing at the University of Birmingham we wouldn’t have otherwise had. The team was easy to work with, and the project did exactly what we wanted. After the project, we’ve continued working with the team we met through ATETA to help us take the next steps."

Frazer Barnes, Chairman at Gen2Carbon

The initial requirement was to record the VCO levels in our recycled paints – whilst working with one of their sister projects, it was decided that ATETA had the specific expertise on the equipment used to realise our requirements. Following on from this we were able to conduct further research.

"As our business is unique in the UK and therefore there are no templates to follow, we are writing the book as we grow. The information received has been invaluable re-enforcing the development of our future plans in both the B2C and B2B markets. 

"The insight will be instrumental in delivering a genuine alternative to virgin paint within a true circular economy. The wealth of knowledge contained within the organisation, the network held at their fingertips and their boundless enthusiasm made all at ATETA both a pleasure to work with and an asset to know."

Lee Cole, Managing Director and Co-founder at Paint360

"I received a lot of interest from several universities when pitching my initial product, but I ultimately decided to work with ATETA at the University of Birmingham. ATETA has kick-started my business and catapulted us into the industry. Since working with them, I’ve given two presentations to the Royal Institute and received the Fast Start Innovation Award from Innovate UK. I was very impressed with the quality of the work they produced, particularly under the pressures of the pandemic."

Vince Alder, Director at Smart Reflectors

ATETA did an analysis of the CO2 emissions and running cost per mile of Nocomoto's novel ebike. The client found this rigorous analysis much more valuable than the top line figures quoted by some sources.

"The ATETA team were very responsive, professional and open to a collaborative approach to obtain the maximum value from the project. Vehicle carbon emissions and running costs are of increasing interest to households, businesses, policymakers and investors. The ATETA project outputs help Nocomoto market our product to customers and investors. ATETA are a highly recommended source of expertise."

Julian Todd, Director at Nocomoto

Professional Polishing Services Ltd are an SME based in the West Midlands. With a 40 year history polishing stainless steel and other non-ferrous metals, their finishes are visible all around the world. They are keen to use collaboration to advance their journey to Net Zero and were struggling to find a calculator to accurately measure their carbon footprint when polishing each sheet of stainless steel. Producing approximately 25,000 tonnes per year having an accurate starting point was essential on reducing the CO2 produced.

"From the initial conversation with Dr Lorelei Gherman, through to the on site testing and final presentation we have been so impressed by the knowledge and ideas that the team at ATETA brought to our project. Through their work we are able to confidently measure our carbon footprint and thus reduce it by looking at the areas that consume the most energy. This project adds commercial and sustainable benefits to our Company and we highly recommend ATETA for their professional approach and their expertise. It’s been an absolute pleasure working with them."

Kirsty Davies-Chinnock BA, MA, Managing Director at PPS

The client developed a novel lubricant additive for use in transmission oil. They wanted us to provide some testing to what, if any, effect the additive had on performance on a standard lubricant. The testing showed a 6.5% improvement on the friction coefficient which would therefore improve the efficiency of the gearbox.

"Convincing people that the Ultraslip Friction Reducer was capable of delivering genuine savings was a hard sell, despite the real-world testing results we had accumulated. Working with ATETA a testing regime was offered by them and this has provided a report confirming the materials exceptional capabilities. Armed with this data we now have customers willing and eager to undertake trials."

Rob Bruerton, Director of Ultraslip

"ATETA helped Vale Green Energy evaluate the feasibility for battery storage; essentially storing solar energy from our solar farm to light the tomato crop in our neighbouring glass house; thus minimising the requirement to use fossil fuel. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the staff involved with the University of Birmingham’s ATETA project for the support and professionalism shown throughout the whole process."

Marco Bille, Director of Vale Green Energy

"As a result of the support received from the ATETA team we are now able to introduce a new low carbon service for our Sleeping Bubbles for our customers. It has been an amazing experience and the support was great. Thanks to all the team and hopefully we will be able to do more project together in the future."

Paulo Jamece, Director at Sleeping Bubbles

DAC are in the business of reliably connecting people in arduous and critical environments. They design and manufacture vandal and weather resistant telephones and help points for an array of industrial applications across the globe.

They wanted to understand more about renewable and low-carbon energy sources to power their telephones. ATETA reviewed the energy needs of DAC’s products and created a report detailing the different types of renewable power sources they could integrate with their RA708 telephone, with tailored explanations and calculations as to the benefits of wind, solar and hydrogen.

"We’ve wanted to explore alternative renewable power sources for some time, specifically wind and hydrogen – the report ATETA provided detailed the suitability of these power sources as well as indicating their viability for our project. The report has ultimately strengthened our understanding of solar, providing some useful context for our engineers. Introducing wind and hydrogen to DAC’s power portfolio opens the door to new markets and opportunities for our business."

Ben Dade, General Manager at DAC Ltd

Adjacency work with novel materials which are difficult to use in composite liquid moulding. They found that traditional PID control methodologies were too slow and poor at dealing with dynamic situations. ATETA helped to identify a more relevant process control methodology with more sustainable materials and renewable energy sources. 

"ATETA gave an intelligent overview and summary that integrated different sources of information into a useable set of guidelines. They were flexible and gave me room to develop my brief. The Knowledge Exchange Fellow we worked with, Yousif, was genuinely interested in our problem and produced a very useful report for us. He was engaging and interested in giving us a practical and effective solution."

Adam Connolly, Director at Adjacency Group Ltd

"Through ATETA funding, from the University of Birmingham, the team helped us with the development of the Solar powered hot water system. ATETA reviewed the electrical safety requirements of the product and provided guidance on electrical safety certification. As a direct result of the work carried out by ATETA, we are at the next stage of bringing the product to market."

Tracey Barnes, Director of Leisure Tanks Ltd

Vienga Ltd is focused on developing an innovative low head, low flow micro hydro turbine primarily for use in off grid and mini grid applications. Our target market is sub-Saharan Africa where our devices would provide 24/7 power to rural communities that currently suffer electricity poverty.

"It is critical that we achieve the highest efficiency across our complete system and we identified that the inlet arrangement needed to be optimised: this is when we turned to the University of Birmingham and the ATETA programme for support.

"They quickly understood the challenge, proposed an approach, executed the work and delivered a comprehensive result that we have been able to take forward in our product design and reduce our technical risks. It has been great working with the team and really appreciated the quality of the work and responsiveness to our suggestions and requests for further modelling. We hope to work with them on future programmes. Vienga have recently been awarded an Innovate UK Fast Start grant to further develop the design as a digital twin." 

Simon Maycock, Director of Vienga Ltd

"We were very impressed with University of Birmingham working together on the ATETA project. The communication and support from the start was excellent and allowed for a trouble-free project. The report produced was exactly what we were looking for, it summarised some of the knowledge we already had and confirmed our ideas, and the in-depth research conducted by University of Birmingham to identify new technological advances was truly excellent. This report is just the start for Lanemark, we are planning to take on the research completed and advance with key highlighted topics to bring added value to our burner products which would not have been possible without the ATETA project."

Aidan Lewis, Technical Manager at Lanemark Combustion Engineering

"Our experience of working with ATETA has been very positive and helpful in the development of our energy storage system. ATETA carried out a detailed examination of our energy storage project and provided crucial technical feed back on various parts of the system that we have now implemented as a review of the project. The work carried out by the ATETA team on our energy storage project has enabled us to further advance the system and gain greater support from other industry bodies. We would recommend any business working within the energy sector seeking help and expertise to work with ATETA."

Jake Quinton, Director at Black Kestrel

Aquapak Polymers Ltd is a developer of innovative and functional environmental polymers, based in Birmingham UK. Aquapak’s core technology, trademarked under the name Hydropol™, is a new formulation of the established and highly functional polymer Polyvinylalcohol (PVOH), which has not been used in mainstream packaging because it is reactive, when thermally stressed and therefore very difficult to process in standard thermoplastic processing. Aquapak is developing a range of formulations of Hydropol which are completely new and require detailed characterisation using both standard and new approaches.

Partnerships with Universities such as University of Birmingham are vital part of understanding this complex polymer. Hydropol is highly functional as a polymer in its own right, but it also dissolves completely and harmlessly in water at controllable temperatures. This gives packaging designers real versatility to form combinations of this polymer with other easily separable materials to replace complex non-recyclable packaging structures with ones that can be easily separated, recovered and recycled in current waste streams. The polymer is also fully biodegradable and non-toxic on land and in the marine, should recycling not be possible.

"The ATETA team are extremely knowledgeable, experts in their field and together overall the project worked well. With this open and cooperative approach we were able to gain insight into our material that verified our existing knowledge and added to it. This included various thermal characterisation techniques, including DSC, TGA and XRD. At the time of the project, not all the analysis carried out, had been done on our material before. The results of this work has helped out on a number of different internal projects, which in turn has helped with our external customers. We would recommend ATETA in any future partnership project work."

Dr John Williams, Chief Scientific Officer, Aquapak

Hogan's Cider is a cider maker that has been brewing since 2005. Nestled in the heart of the Warwickshire countryside, Hogan's uses expertly grown cider apples and pears from farms in Herefordshire. Allen Hogan started cider making as a hobby in the mid 1980's and after years of perfecting the process, started selling his cider at farmers markets and is now stocked worldwide. Now producing around 600,000 litres a year, energy consumption has increased alongside production volumes.

The ATETA programme offered Hogan's Cider a unique opportunity to benefit from external expertise to assess the business’ energy consumption. Hogan's uses re-fillable kegs to deliver their products to bars and pubs across the country allowing a product life of up to 20 years. The kegs require a thorough cleaning and sterilisation process on their return. This process is particularly water and heat intensive to ensure the kegs are cleaned to the required standard, or higher.

ATETA identified an opportunity to conserve some of the wasted thermal energy from this sterilisation process. There are two waste pipes which eject the water after it has been heated and used. ATETA’s analysis found that using a heat exchanger, the waste hot water could be recycled

to improve the thermal efficiency of heating the fresh hot water. As a result of this system, the process can capture around 10°C resulting in a reduced energy requirement. The team were able to use an infrared thermometer and record clear improvements in the heat lost. Without the ATETA programme, Hogan's would not have considered the implementation of this system and would not be benefitting from improved energy efficiency.

“It was good to have them visit, we really value the consultant’s insight. They actually established that we had waste, and that we should be able to capture heat”

After learning from ATETA Hogan's realises there is still more work to be done. This keg washing system has a second waste system which could also be harnessed to improve its efficiency further. Additionally, the company is considering the possibility of installing a solar panel array to power the system, instead of relying on mains electricity. The business is also considering how it can improve the sustainability of its supply chain.

These ideas are important for the Hogan's, which is highly motivated to improve their green credentials. The hospitality industry faces the challenge of improving energy efficiency, and ATLCTA has enabled Hogan’s to be one of company’s trying to make a difference.

Atomic Tractor is an early-stage farm machinery company, started in 2020 and based in Coventry. Campbell Scott, CEO and Founder, hopes to revolutionise the future of the farming industry. The company is still in early R&D stages but is steadily moving closer to commercialisation. Campbell developed Atomic Tractor's concept in 2020. Using his 30 years experience in industry he set out to reduce reliance on diesel powered farm vehicles. Atomic Tractor aims to produce the next wave of innovative zero emission tractors, operating on hydrogen fuel cells as opposed to liquid hydrogen or standard battery technology. Campbell and Atomic Tractor hope that this new technology can act as a catalyst for reduced emissions in the farming industry, something under prioritised in recent legislation.

Atomic Tractor have a number of competitors from the likes of JCB and New Holland who are both pursuing their own unique methods of alternatively powered tractors such as hydrogen fuelled vehicles, for regular combustion engines and the development of biomethane to be fed into regular engines. Campbell was initially motivated to join the programme to access academic and technical expertise. He needed support to analyse the performance and efficiency of different solutions to inform the product development. ATETA stood out as this type of support was not available from other programmes in the area.

The ATETA Programme provided specialist academic and technical support, which made an important contribution to Atomic Tractor’s product development. ATETA facilitated the validation for using hydrogen fuel cells over standard battery-electric power, and proved the efficiency of the engines. Proving that the hydrogen fuel cell technology could operate for periods as long as a standard combustion engine, without any additional weight and with over double the efficiency was integral to the future of the business. The two studies delivered by ATETA have provided “very high-quality material that Atomic Tractor can add to grant applications and presentations to investors”.

Atomic Tractor has faced a challenge raising investment as other businesses may have already developed and marketed alternatives. However, Campbell has found that this rigorous research has provided suitable backing to promote Atomic Tractor as a serious contender alongside the incumbent brands and is how engaged with both private and public investors. These new funding streams will help get the Atomic Tractor product into prototyping and development.

“When you're a small business you need all the help you can get... I met some encouraging and helpful people... who pushed my business forward. It was a really big advantage. The quality was really good, they’ve got some great experts”.

During Atomic Tractors consultations with farmers, concerns have been raised that there is some uncertainty around these novel technologies. Once further developments are made it is hoped that a practical application in the field can prove the concept to farmers and will allay current fears. Looking to the future, Campbell discussed ambitious plans to get to commercialisation. The priority is retrofitting existing farming machinery, rather than producing an entirely new vehicle. Atomic Tractor will produce a package which can replace the conventional diesel engine systems to modernise an existing fleet.

Zero Industries is an early-stage motorcycle company, started in 2020, based in Tamworth. John Jewkes recognised the demand for more environmentally friendly ways for motorbike riders to enjoy the activity and started the business to transform the industry. John was concerned that current zero emission solutions would limit the utility of motorbikes as the battery and hydrogen technology used in cars is less effective in motorbikes. Instead, John seeks to retrofit existing motorbikes with new technology to reduce their carbon emissions. There is a clear market demand for the product as evidenced by the company's current waiting list of over 2,500 people. Zero Industries product line will help bike owners retrofit their bikes. First the products will address the engine casings but will then go on to utilise a new type of engine management system to allow them to burn a special nitrogen enriched fuel (with much lower carbon emissions).

ATETA helped Zero Industries by analysing and modelling the optimum operating temperature ranges for their prototypes. These new parts use a strong polymer, to replace the existing heavy aluminium engine casings. Using new laser and powder 3D printing technology, these polymers can be formed into unique shapes with unique properties such as high temperature resistance and strength. This process also produces very little waste, which improves the sustainable credentials of the product when compared to machined aluminium. John was motivated to join the ATETA programme to receive specialist scientific support to assess the performance of his prototype design. The simulated stress tests run at the University of Birmingham found these parts could withstand over 10 tonnes of force and John was particularly pleased with the quality of the data and analysis he received. He valued the expertise and knowledge of ATETA and the highly detailed calculations the Research Fellows were able to perform.

“The report was absolutely fantastic. There was so much data in there.”

Without this support, John feels the process of getting his products to market would have been much harder. This scientific insight from ATETA sped up the process of development and removed the need to make and test many iterations, which saved both time and money. Once the designs have been finalised, John hopes to take commercial orders soon. There are plans to get his retrofitted bikes into the hands of some MotoGP riders and KTM aficionados, who will really put the bikes through their paces.

In the future Zero Industries will be able to manufacture their products worldwide. The aim is to sell the digital files for people to professionally print the physical parts with their own laser printers, reducing the air-miles needed to reach their customer base, and seeing a product supported by ATETA reaching a global market. There are also plans to develop new hydrogen derived fuels, as well as high octane nitrogen and liquid oxygen mixtures. These new fuels would operate with zero carbon emissions.