Hosted by the Midlands Energy Consortium and a key tenant of LUSEP, the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) supports collaborative engineering projects that accelerate the development of affordable, secure and sustainable energy technologies including emissions reduction.

In December 2013, ETI launched a high-tech laboratory at the University as part of a £4.5m project to explore ways of improving the catalytic conversion efficiencies of exhaust systems in heavy duty vehicles (HDVs).

Led by clean technologies company Johnson Matthey, the collaborative project brings together the University’s expertise – particularly a team from the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering led by Professor Graham Hargrave – and ETI member, Caterpillar.

Using a range of state-of-the-art optical diagnostic facilities and advanced computational modelling, the laboratory is equipped to measure the fluid and gas flows within modern HDV exhaust systems.

The research will play a key role in developing word-leading NOx reduction technologies – specifically a more efficient HDV catalytic converter which should deliver fuel efficiency and CO2 benefits of between 3–4%.