GDNs currently have a licence condition to provide fan heaters & hot plates to customers in vulnerable situations during a gas outage to stay warm, heat water & food. However, some customers will not be able transfer the hot water to a bowl or sink to be able to wash or clean with.
Haydale’s graphene ink-based heaters offer a potential low power usage solution to heat water in domestic premises when the gas supply is interrupted and can be easily adapted into different designs to deliver bespoke solutions for a wide range of customer requirements, so is of interest to Cadent and their challenge of providing hot water to their customers in vulnerable situations when their gas supply is interrupted.
Haydale’s graphene inks can be printed onto a variety of substrates, either rigid or flexible, they are conformable and flexible. They can be tailored for bespoke solutions to operate at a variety of resistivities and powers, and in different design configurations, so these offer a wide range of options to deliver solutions across a variety of different and varying use case scenarios.
Benefits
Haydale’s graphene ink-based heaters offer a potential low power usage solution to heat water in domestic premises intended in this instance for when the gas supply is interrupted and can allow Cadent to meet their challenge of ensuring customers are safe, warm and independent in their own homes and providing alternatives to current provisions in these instances.
This method will provide a prototype for a commercial solution, that currently does not exist within the market, to enable customers in vulnerable situations to heat water, be able to wash and clean and allow them to live independently.
Data Quality Statement
The project will ensure that necessary data is of sufficient quality and readily available to meet the objectives of the project. This will be achieved by providing current relevant PSR data, to enable development to progress in the correct manner and also be informed from a separate project that Haydale are currently working on, which will provide indicative data for concept development.
Measurement Quality Statement
The project will collect data directly from the PSR Database, that is relevant to the project as well as utilising data that has been captured by Haydale in a separate project. This data will be communicated and reviewed with the wider project team regularly to ensure transparency and consistency.
Learnings
Outcomes
The project set out to deliver what was originally captured in the scope, which is to evaluate the feasibility of graphene ink for Cadents needs of providing hot water when an off-gas situation occurs and develop a proof of concept/principle prototype(s) to deliver a suitable solution.
This has been demonstrated as feasible by creating two 3-D prototypes, one for use in the kitchen to allow domestic cleaning and one for use in the bathroom to allow personal cleaning/hygiene.
Lessons Learnt
Should there be a further phase of this project, to TRL8 which would include Field Trials, then consideration will need to be given as to how the product is trialled effectively and at a relevant scale, given that we will not wish to knowingly put customers into an off-gas situation.
Also, a valuable lesson in this project was having the ability to review a 3-D model prior to building prototypes that would be ready to assess. Whilst the theoretical requirements where met, once a practical device was built and able to be reviewed, it became apparent that changes would need to be made to ensure that this device could be easily handled and used, meaning that, in the real world, customers would be more inclined to do so.
