A scientist working on an advanced hydrogen fuel cell technology that converts organic waste into clean energy has lost over a decade of work in a suspected arson attack.
Luke Evans, a PhD student at the University of Liverpool and chief executive of Scintilla, a collaborative manufacturing enterprise aiming to convert organic household waste into clean electricity, was just two months away from submitting his PhD when he received a call on 10 January. He was told that his research lab – based at a community recycling hub called The Bridge in Wavertree, Merseyside – had been entirely destroyed.
Speaking to The Guardian, Evans said he was ‘in shock’. ‘I couldn’t believe that had happened at this point,’ he added. ‘My experimental data and all the equipment to do those experiments was in there; log books, hard drives, sim cards with data on, all the materials to make a few more stacks, all the electronics to test those. It’s everything really, it feels like a nightmare.’
Emergency services were called to the site just after 8.30pm on 10 January. According to reports, the police believe the fire was started deliberately and are appealing to anyone who witnessed suspicious activity to come forward.
A crowdfunding page has been set up by Scintilla in the hope that Evans and his team can start to rebuild what was lost in the fire. According to the page, Scintilla were only months way from launching a ‘groundbreaking new technology’ that would enable the provision of low-cost and community-owned energy. It added that the workshop housed the only physical representation of this unique technology, which had been created and built up collaboratively over several years.
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