ENSICAEN partner meeting to highlight how methanation can reduce CO2 emissions.
The eleventh GenComm partner meeting will be held at ENSICAEN in Caen in December 2019.
The École nationale supérieure d'ingénieurs de Caen & Centre de Recherche (ENSICAEN), which translates as National Graduate School of Engineering & Research Center, is one of the main French "grandes écoles", whose main purpose is to form chemical, electronical, and computer science engineers. The engineering school is located on the city of Caen (France) in Normandy.
At the December event, Associate Professor Dr. Federico Azzolina-Jury, representing ENSICAEN, will present his main results obtained in the framework of GENCOMM on the methanation sub-route: Firstly , the manufacture of a remarkable stable catalyst based on alumina using nickel as an active phase will be described by Federico. A scientific article has been published (Federico Azzolina-Jury, “Novel boehmite transformation into g-alumina and preparation of efficient nickel base alumina porous extrudates for plasma-assisted CO2 methanation”, Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 71 (2019) 410-424) and several conferences have been given on this subject around the globe.
Second, the catalytic activity of this catalyst on the CO2 methanation reaction in a methanation pilot in collaboration with INSA Rouen will be addressed. Another scientific article has been also published on this subject (B. Alrafei, I. Polaert, A. Ledoux, F. Azzolina-Jury, “Remarkably stable and efficient Ni and Ni-Co catalysts for CO2 methanation”, Catalysis Today Article in the press, March 2019).
Finally, the use of novel technologies for CO2 methanation currently being carried out in ENSICAEN will be presented. For this December meeting, several key figures from industry and the academic sector have been invited to speak about H2 production using different industrial processes.
This meeting is a great opportunity to introduce the main results and work of this North West Europe Interreg project to local authorities, colleagues and local students and GenComm partners. Moreover, the GenComm partners work will show to the local public, the feasibility of the implementation of renewable hydrogen technologies through the three GenComm pilot plants located in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Germany.
The methanation sub route of this project is a valuable technology for reducing CO2 emissions into the atmosphere and for producing methane. ENISCAEN has been working on the heart of this methanation process with the synthesis, preparation, characterization and shaping of an efficient catalyst. The catalyst should allow performing the methanation reaction with a relatively high activity (CO2 conversion and methane yield) without being deactivated. ENISCAEN has succeeded in preparing such a catalyst bringing new perspectives for the conception of an efficient industrial methanation process.