UK Business Briefs: clean cars, pollution graduates and a recycled road

Design engineering company Piper Design is providing the

powertrain and suspension design for a new British hydrogen fuel cell Microcab vehicle, which aims to become the cleaner choice of transport in urban areas. The Microcab was originally designed with solar power as its principal energy source but is now set to use hi tech hydrogen fuel cell power in its commercial launch next year.

This year’s students have completed their MSc in Water Pollution Control Technology at Cranfield. The students, who undertook projects sponsored by companies such as Anglia, Severn Trent and Yorkshire Water, hope to start promising careers with leading water utility companies that have previously recruited from the Cranfield programme.

A trial access road has been built on a smelting site operated by Britannia Zinc using non-ferrous industry waste as a bound aggregate. The project aims to encourage the use of waste materials within construction. The trial road uses ferro-silicate slag from the production of zinc as a partial replacement for sand in concrete. It will carry a large amount of heavy industrial traffic and will be monitored for compressive strength, general condition, carbonation, chloride ingress and leaching. The next stage of the project will involve a bituminous road that will be monitored in the same way. If funding is secured, a demonstration trial will also involved spent pot linings and refractory bricks from aluminium smelting.