Objectives
ATLAS-MHC is an Industry-Academia Partnership and Pathways project that was proposed as a follow-up action of the successfully finalized ATLAS-H2 IAPP project which provided remarkable achievements on solving challenging issues in compressing and storing hydrogen. The major aims of the current project are to up-scale the laboratory prototype metal-hydride compressor (MHC) developed under ATLAS-H2 and to evaluate the pilot scale, precompetitive MHC implemented in a complete renewable energy storage system. The present extension of the original ATLAS project aspires to upscale and bring close to commercialization the main outcome of ATLAS-H2 (the Metal Hydride Compressor) while paying considerable attention to the demonstration of its potential applications (RES storage, hydrogen filling stations for vehicles, etc) and the development of a complete business plan for market deployment and penetration. The ATLAS-H2 project is funded by the EC programme FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IAPP.
The main ATLAS-MHC objectives of developing and evaluating hydrogen compressors for electricity storage will be achieved by promoting and implementing a well-structured IAPP program between (i) two academia partners (the Greek National Center for Scientific Research Demokritos, NCSRD and the German Aerospace Center, DLR), with distinguished research activities in the areas of energy, environment, material science and engineering and (ii) two SME partners (HYSTORE Technologies Ltd., Cyprus and DIADIKASIA Business Consultants S.A., Greece) developing novel hydrogen-based energy systems and addressing market issues related to the penetration of the commercial product to be developed in the international energy market, respectively. The strategic partnership will be realized through mutual exchange of visits of several early stage and experienced researchers from the two R&D Institutions, who will be seconded to the two SME partners thus transferring and potentially transforming theoretical and experimental knowledge to an applied, marketable outcome, in a view of solving real-life energy problems. These researchers will also absorb knowledge offered at the SMEs sites, especially on system level engineering aspects. Similarly, experienced researchers from the SME partners will be relocated to the two R&D Institutions, thus promoting and enhancing an effective communication and technology transfer between research in academia and practical applications in the energy industry and energy market issues. Besides, newly recruited experienced researchers outside the partnership will be selected in order to reinforce the research and management potential of the SME partners.
The long term objective of ATLAS-MHC is to support and promote initiatives for long lasting integration and collaboration between the partners and, more importantly, to contribute to the realization of the hydrogen economy in Europe by the development and real-life applications of novel metal-hydride compressors that can be optimally integrated with the developed process in order to explore potential synergistic benefits between material and process design.
