Carbon Connections is a R&D program sponsored by the British government which the main objective is to develop clean forms of generating energy.

TecnoVeritas has been developing, in conjunction with the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Sir Joseph Institute, one power plant capable of producing electric energy and a thermal energy virtually without carbon emissions.

The plant is based on the use of a four stroke compression ignition engine, transformed to operate with hydrogen and vegetable oil. Hydrogen is to be produced at another NaREC facility, while vegetable oils can be blended and conditioned at the lab.

The plant is installed inside of a 40 ft marine container, and is divided into three compartments: engine room, control room and vegetable oil conditioning and storage plant.

The laboratory container is to be installed at NaREC (NaREC is a leading research and development platform for new, sustainable and renewable energy technologies in the UK. www.narec.co.uk/).

The plant has an overall efficiency of 89%, resulting from the use of high performance CHP system. From the engine equipped with an hydrogen multi point injection system, heat flows from the cylinder and oil cooling are recovered together with the exhaust gas heat flow, and used to heat up water for domestic heating. The electric power produced 45 kW, is used for the lab facility but can be injected into the grid.

The laboratory is equipped with a Scada system enabling the local or remote operation of the plant, management of all the sub systems and also incorporates all the safety aspects required to deal with hydrogen.

This real laboratory is to be used in research activities by the Newcastle University post graduated students