Prof. Oakey has over 40 years’ experience in energy industries and has a senior cross cutting role within Cranfield’s Energy and Power theme.
At Cranfield, he now supports a range of research initiatives in a consultancy capacity, in particular in hydrogen production and advanced turbine cycles for power generation and electric vehicle charging. In the past he has led research in thermal power, renewables and offshore engineering. His specific interests have been in energy and fuels from biomass and waste, thermal power plant life extension and flexible operation, biomass co-firing, CO2 capture, transport and storage, gas cleaning technologies and the application of advanced materials. Prior to joining Cranfield in 1998, he was a senior manager in British Coal, leading a range of clean coal technology research programmes, e.g. in support of pressurised fluidised bed combustion and advanced gasification cycles.
On the international stage, he has led the UK side of a wide-ranging energy research collaboration programme with USDOE since 2003 and has been involved in technology transfer projects with China on gas cleaning, underground coal gasification and biomass co-firing. He is member of the steering boards of ETN Global and the Energy Materials Industrial Research Initiative (EMIRI) and leads the Energy Working Group of European Technology Platform for Advanced Engineering Materials and Technologies (EuMaT).