Can you shortly introduce yourself and your role in the HyInHeat project?

We are part of Toyota Motor Europe Production Engineering Innovation Department. Our team is responsible for early-stage identification and development of technologies for use in our European production facilities. 

Among many other activities, we are investigating ways to improve the carbon footprint of all our operations considering different energy sources, new processes, material usage, and waste handling and minimization. 

Dr. Magdalena Coventry is our main lead for the HyInHeat project. She is our specialist in casting and heat treatment operations. Our colleagues Krzysztof Luterek and Daria Bogdan at our powertrain manufacturing plant in Poland are also critical partners in the project with concrete experience and direct access to the actual manufacturing environment. 

In HyInHeat we are a potential end user of the technologies developed for heat treatment systems. We are also a potential future user of steels made using hydrogen burners, so we are very interested in that side of the project as well.

How did TOYOTA MOTOR EUROPE get involved in the HyInHeat project?

We have a strong network with RWTH Aachen University and AMAP GmbH. AMAP is an industrial-academic cluster where we explore and implement pre-competitive collaboration with other industrial companies and several institutes of RWTH Aachen. We established a trusted connection with RWTH IOB (Department for Industrial Furnaces and Heat Engineering) and through this connection we were introduced to the HyInHeat consortium – which was still developing at that time.

How do you see the added value of HyInHeat for TOYOTA MOTOR EUROPE?

The topic of hydrogen burners is multi-faceted especially when we talk about performance evaluation, optimization and integration in actual facilities. You need a lot of different skills and experience to achieve this. It is not something you can easily do alone.

The added value of HyInHeat is the diverse skill set and shared commitment of this consortium. And also of course that the European Commission are kindly funding a substantial part of this research which would be quite a high risk to take as individual entities – even if we were to try to assemble the same team.

What is the role of TOYOTA MOTOR EUROPE in the HyInHeat project?

We will be participating in life cycle analysis (LCA) activities. We will also provide some boundary conditions of our typical heat treatment systems. It is expected this will contribute to the lab-scale test criteria and development of a demonstration system that may be introduced for applied testing in our facilities towards the end of the project.

What do you hope to achieve by the end of the project?

We hope to get better insight about how hydrogen-based facilities really perform considering full life cycle operations including issues such as the economics, maintenance, and also emissions. We would like to see these technologies moved a substantial step closer to commercial viability. There is already some experience in the Japanese side of our organization, so we are really interested if there are some unique designs, inspirations and opportunities specific to the European region and the researchers involved in this project.