DCU Engineering academic funded under SFI National Challenge Fund

16/02/2023

Dr James Carton from the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering has received funding from the SFI Challenge fund - which supports researchers who can help Ireland meet its target goal of climate neutrality by 2050.

Simon Harris, Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science announced the first 26 teams to receive funding under the €65 million National Challenge Fund on Monday February 13th.

The project “RSER- renewable energy storage for mobile applications” co-lead by Dr James Carton of DCU in collaboration with lead Dr Andrew Philips from UCD aims to technically optimise the "Renewable Energy Storage Reactor" (RESR) with advantages centred around patent-protected catalysts, processes and technology that vastly increases the energy storage density of green-produced hydrogen.

The team intends to enhance the utilisation of hydrogen storage media with increased safety and reliability while developing/upgrading the lightweight prototype reactor with components for ease of assembly and manufacturing while enabling recycling and reusability of the energy storage medium, thus establishing a circular economic/environmental friendly process.

Dr James Carton is Assistant Professor in Sustainable Energy in DCU. His research focus is energy sustainability & green Hydrogen deployment through techno-economic modelling, Power-to-X and renewable energy storage research.

Dr James Carton is also founder of Hydrogen Ireland Association, academic advisor to Hydrogen Mobility Irelan & hydrogen expert to the United Nations-ECE.

The 26 winning teams, including the DCU team, will be provided with the chance to grow and scale their activities through follow-on funding in future phases, ranging from €500,000 to €2 million.

The next teams to join the challenges will be announced in June.